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2025 China Tea Travel

June 26, 2025

2025 China Tea Travel

I've always enjoyed traveling; especially to new places.  Being in new, unfamiliar surroundings with unexplored sights, smells and foods can be pretty exciting.  I'm sitting in front of a keyboard at our home base here in Taiwan trying to absorb everything I saw and experienced in a recent 10-day itinerary in rural South-East China in the province of Fujian. 

This was my first time to Fujian*.  I've always wanted to go because it's kind of the... ancient Taiwan so to speak.  Taiwan is mostly made up of Fujianese immigrants who speak the Min Nan dialect, the same as most of Fujian.  I've of course spent a lot of time in the Taiwanese countryside so the Fujian countryside felt... normal.  However, Fujian is Mainland China and not Taiwan, so there were some stark differences.   I'll write more details about this later.  It was a total blast!

I chose two general-area destinations in Fujian renowned for the history and quality of their teas - Wuyishan and Anxi.  I'll save the details for later blogs but here's a brief introduction:

Old Tree Shui Xian plants being held up by natural made scaffolding in Wuyishan.

Wuyishan is famous for Rock Teas, or Yan Cha.  Not a mountain strictly but the name of the area around the town of Wuyishan.  It's also the birthplace of both Oolong Tea and Black Tea believe it or not.  It's also amazingly beautiful.  I spent two days just hiking through the area and it's the only place I remember in my whole life that actually made me shed tears of amazement while at the summit for  the sheer scale and beauty of the place. It truly was a welcome sight.  The teas we get from our farm partner here is DaHongPao, ShuiXian, Rougui, Lapsang Souchong, and a couple surprises. 

 

Lots of Aunties collecting the goods at harvest in XiangHua Xiang, Anxi. 

Anxi reminded me of rural Taiwan.  I was constantly surrounded by Min Nan dialect.  The cadence, volume and overall friendliness of the locals was very familiar to me.  Unlike Taiwan, the mountains are terraced so that was a surprise.  Of course the star of the show in Anxi is the oolong known as Tieguanyin, or Iron Goddess. The two areas I chose for my own purchases were Gande and XiangHua Xiang, both places next to each other and both very high in elevation at around 1,700M.  About the same as Shanlinxi in Taiwan.  

 

The "Mother Trees" of Da Hong Pao Oolong above my head at Wuyishan National Park.

 

*In fact, I've only been to Mainland China once before - to Yunnan for our 2015 Kickstarter called "The Quest for the World's Best Teas". 




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