Friday, December 21, 2007
Posted by Miss Neddy at 08:30 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Categories: Tea Green

As with the other types of tea, there is a multitude of varieties for green tea. Green tea is more popular among the Japanese, but there are still some widely famous Chinese green teas. Two of them are Longjing (龙井） and Bi Luo Chun （碧螺春）.

The best and most famous Longjing, of course, comes from Hangzhou, especially the area around the Xi Hu （西湖）or West Lake. There is temple in Hangzhou with the same name, as well as, uh,  a well. However, the best water for Longjing, proverbially, is not the Dragon’s Well water, but the Hu Pao （虎跑） spring water － the proverb is “Longjing from Xi Hu, water from Hu Pao Spring”（西湖龙井虎跑泉）. Hu Pao means “Tiger Running”, and spring water is reputed to be very light and clear, enhancing the grassy flavour of Longjing. Longjing can be an acquired taste, as some people who are used to darker teas may find the taste too raw, too much like just-cut grass or even raw fish! My first experience with good Longjing from Xi Hu was electrifying. As the tea was steeping, I thought I smelled freshly cooked chicken wings, and when I tasted the tea, I thought I was tasting freshly steamed fish! That year’s Longjing was particularly fragrant and robust and I have never encountered such an excellent Longjing again.

Bi Luo Chun （碧螺春）is another excellent green tea, although it is not easy to make properly. The quantity of tea, the water temperature and steeping time must be handled very carefully. The leaves are very fine, sometimes almost wispy, and very curly, even more so than the average wulong. It is this extra fineness of the leaves that make them prone to scalding from over-hot water and also over-steeping. With this tea, it is always best to underestimate rather than overestimate: use less tea leaves, lower water temperature and a shorter steeping time. If the tea tastes too insipid, try again with a longer steeping time. If the flavour still does not come through, you may wish to risk a slightly higer water temperature. I may sound paranoid about the matter, but the truth is I have yet to come up with a foolproof method for making good Bi Luo Chun every time. Every year, I would encounter a slightly different quality of tea leaves, some which tolerate higher water temperatures, and some which need more leaves or a longer steeping time to bring out the flavour and fragrance.

The scent of the tea is very strong and much like a floral fragrance, but it has less of the raw, grassy flavour that most other tea leaves possess. The story goes that the original name of the tea was “So Fragrant It Scares You To Death” (吓死人香); the Qing dynasty emperor Kang Xi （康熙）, who was travelling in the region incognito, loved the tea, but hated the name. So he renamed it Bi Luo Chun. Two reasons are cited for his choice of name. The more romantic one goes that he had a lover in Hangzhou by that name, and so bestowed her name upon the tea; the more pragmatic one is that the three words describe the tea intimately. Bi （碧） is a kind of jade green; Luo （螺） means to spiral like a snail’s shell; Chun （春） means springtime, as this tea is most often harvested in spring. I would like to believe the romantic reason, but that would deflate Kang Xi’s wit and poetic spirit. However, considering how fickle the tea is to my (admittedly indifferent) tea brewing skills, it is rather reminiscent of a beautiful woman who is unpredictable in her favours.

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