Huangshan Mao Feng (Huangshan Hairpoint)
While not strictly a scented tea, this variety produces an apricotcolored beverage with the fragrance
of magnolias, even though none grow nearby. perhaps the wild peach trees blossoming all over the hills
surrounding Huangshan in Anhui province make some contribution. Adn perhaps that is why one authority
lists it among the finve best known teas in China. Huangshan tea drinkders have a saying: the firset cup
is most fragrant, the second sweetest, the third, strongest.
Plucked very young at the stage of only a bud and a single unfolding leaf, the leaves when processed are
yellowish green, flat with a very slight upturn, and covered with silvery hair. The Qingming (early April)
picking is sold as a special choice grade.
Every part of the Chinese countryside has its legends which reflect the tragedy of life of old china, and
there is one linked with Huangshan Mao Feng. A young man and a beautiful young woman from a tea plantation
were in love, but the local tyrant seized her for his concubine.
She escaped, only to learn that the landlord had killed her lover. When she found the lover's body deep in the
mountains, she wept and wept, untill she became the rain, while her lover's body turned into a tea bush. That
is why, says the legend, the area where this tea grows is cloudy and humid the year round.