The Interesting Legends About Chinese Tea
5 min readBeing a kind of drink, tea has already had thousands of years’ history, and some of its profound cultural content was from the legends and tales people created.
These stories usually went around in the teahouses, which, after the embellishment of the tea servers, brought much fun to the tea drinkers.
Biluochun Tea and the “Frightening Fragrance”
Biluochun, the famous tea produced in Dongting Mountain on the Taihu Lake in Jiangsu Province, had a queer name in the ancient time-the “Frightening Fragrance”.
There was an appealing legend about the origin of this name: A long time ago, on Dongting Mountain in Jiangsu Province there usually hung a bizarre and strong fragrance. The ancient people thought that it was the evil spirit doing mischief, so nobody dared to go onto the mountain. One day,a brave and persevering girl went to cut firewood in the mountain, and when she climbed halfway, she found that there was a strong fragrance in the air. Out of curiosity, she climbed towards the top. When she arrived there, she found several exuberant tea plants on the mountain top, from which the fragrance emanated.
The girl collected some leaves and went down the mountain. On her way back, she was greatly affected by its strong fragrance. Upon the arrival at home, the girl was very tired and thirsty. She took out the tea leaves, and immediately the entire house was full of the “frightening”fragrance. Then the girl pinched some tender bud leaves and brewed a cup of tea for herself. To her surprise, the tea was quite refreshing and her tiredness disappeared after she drank the tea. The girl was very delighted, and on the second day she transplanted the tea plants on the top of themountain into her field. After several years of careful cultivation, the tea plants grew exuberantly, and the fragrance they emanated attracted many neighbors, from afar or near. And the girl used the bud leaves plucked from these tea plants to brewtea and entertain the people. People saw that these bud leaves were all covered with hair, and while drinking, they found that the tea was really fragrant. Therefore people asked the name of this tea, and the girl answered without thinking, “Frightening Fragrance”. Consequently, this kind of tea got the name of “Frightening Fragrance”.
Then, how did this “Frightening Fragrance”Tea change its name into Biluochun? According to the Literary Notes by Liunan written by Wang Yankui in the Qing dynasty, once Emperor Kangxi went to visit the area in the south of Yangtze River, he tasted this fragrant, mellow and verdure-colored tea, and he loved it very much.
But the emperor thought the name of “Frightening Fragrance”too vulgar, so he granted this kind of tea the new name “Biluochun”
White Crane Nodding and Junshan Yinzhen Tea
Junshan Yinzhen Tea is planted in Junshan Mountain in Hunan province. Its name of Yinzhen(literally means silver needle) is mainly because after being poured, the tea leaves take the shape of silver needles standing upright in the water.
There was also a record saying that when Emperor Mingzong Li Siyuan of the Later Tang dynasty (923～936) first held court, the servant brewed tea for him. When the hot water was poured into the bowl, the emperor saw a cloud of white mist ascended and transformed into a white crane. The white crane nodded three times to EmperorMingzong and then flew away. When the emperor looked into the cup, he saw that tea leaves a1l suspended in the water perpendicularly, just like many bamboo shoots that breaking through the soil. After a while, the leaves began to sink slowly, like snowing.
Emperor Mingzong asked the servant,”What’s the matter?”The servant answered, “It is the Junshan water that brews Huanglingmao Tea. White crane’s nodding showed respect, and Huanglingmao Tea sank slowly showed the submitting towards Your Majesty.”Emperor Mingzong was very happy about that and issued an edict immediately to make Junshan Huanglingmao Tea the “tribute tea”. In fact what the servant said was to blandish the emperor, but “white crane nodding”and “Huanglingmao Tea sinking slowly”really described the marvel of Junshan Yinzhen Tea vividly.
Guanyin Bodhisattva and Tieguanyin Tea
A legend has it that in 1725 or so, there was an old tea planter called Wei Yin in today’s Songyan Village of Xiping, who was very diligent in planting tea. He als believed in Guanyin very much; for decades he persisted in sacrificing a cup of tea before the sculpture of Guanyin every morning and evening.
One night, Wei Yin dreamed that when he went to work, he passed a brook, beside which he found a tea plant in the crevice of a rock, luxuriant and fragrant. Wei Yi felt very strange and when he was going to pluck the leaves, he was awakened by the barks of dogs. In that morning, Wei Yin, out of curiosity, followed the way in his dream to look for that tea plant. To his surprise, he really found a tea plant just as what he saw in the dream in the crevice of the rock, with fat leaves of ellipse-form and purple-colored tender buds, very different from other species of tea plants. Overjoyed, Wei Yin transplanted this tea plant into an old iron pot and cultivated it carefully. Several years later, after proper preparation, the tea from this plant really was of special kind and was very fragrant, and Wei Yin treated it as a treasure. He stored it in the pot secretly and only when the honorable guests came he would brew this tea for them to taste. And those who drank this tea all highly praised it.
One day,a teacher of a private school drank this tea and was quite surprised,”What good tea is it?”Wei Yin told him his dream and the course of transplantation in detail. He also told the teacher that since this tea plant was found in the crevice of a rock which resembled an arhat and later was transplanted into an iron pot, so he wanted to call it “iron arhat”. But this teacher held a different opinion. He thought that this tea must be granted by Guanyin Bodhisattva by dream, and since the tea leaves were of heavy body like iron, so he told Wei Yin,”There are good and bad arhats; how could this good tea use such a vulgar name? Since it was found because of Guanyin Bodhisattva’s direction in your dream, it is better to ca1l it’ Tieguanyin'(Iron Guanyin)!”Wei Yin couldn’t agree with him more. From then on, Tieguanyin Tea began to be famous all over the world.
