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Today, the rare, delicious Dong Ding oolong tea from Taiwan is prized throughout the world. Nicknamed the ‘Fair Lady’, the tea is loved for its exceptionally strong fragrance and sweet aftertaste that few teas have.

However, few know that the tea is actually a specimen of a Wu Yi oolong tea strain that has been carefully selected from Wu Yi Mountain in Fujian province and re-planted in Taiwan.

It’s not surprising at all because that piece of history was almost 400 years old!

Lin Fang Chi, a young Taiwanese scholar, came to the Fujian province for the provincial exam that could offer him a post in the government. Luckily, Lin passed the exam.

Upon returning, Lin hoped to bring his friends some gifts. Since Lin was poor and couldn’t afford the travelling expenses, his fellow villagers donated the money to make his trip possible.

Almost immediately, Lin decided to bring what the province was most famous for – the oolong tea trees grown in the Wu Yi Mountain. He personally had tasted the tea, and was stunned by the exquisite fragrance and flavor. He hoped the tea that was highly valued in the market would earn his fellow villagers big money for many years to come.

So Lin brought a batch of 36 oolong tea trees back to Taiwan. Day in and day out, Lin and the villagers carefully cultivated their precious oolong tea trees. In a few years, the tea plants began to produce tea leaves that was highly priced in the market.

Later, in a meeting with the emperor, Lin offered his new tea of Taiwan, which stunned the emperor with its deep and refreshing flavor. Since the tea was grown in high peaks of Dong Ding Mountain in Taiwan, the emperor renamed it ‘Dong Ding’, or ‘Frozen Summit’.

Over the centuries, the making of the tea was refined, and now it becomes a class all of its own. But tea experts say that if you savor with ease, you can still find hints of similarity in between the two.

After all, Wu Yi Mountain is the home of Dong Ding, and those 36 Wuyi oolong tea trees the mother of the ‘Fair Lady’.

During his historical visit to China in 1972, then U.S. president Richard Nixon received a special gift from Chairman Mao – a small pack of 400 grams of top quality Da Hong Pao oolong tea The president joked:”It’s a tiny quantity”, to which Chairman Mao responded:”No, that’s not tiny at all. Half of what China has is in here.”.

Chairman Mao was telling the truthThe annual production of Da Hong Pao in China was merely a kilo at the time400 grams, that’s a whole lot

But how come the tea was rare?

In All of China, there were only 6 Da Hong Pao tea trees growing and producing tea leaves before the 1970s. One kilo of tea, that’s the production for a whole year.

Also, harvesting the tea leaves was challenging, for the tea trees grow half way up a soaring cliff in the Wu Yi Mountain. In old times, monkeys were trained to pick the tea leaves.

But, if Da Hong Pao is so rare, what is it in your cup?

The truth is: it’s still Da Hong Pao, but not made of tea leaves from the six original tea trees.

In 1982, after years of request, an oolong tea expert named Chen De Hua received a batch of five Da Hong Pao twigs. Chen re-planted all the five twigs in his experimental field, and nurtured thm with great care. Soon, the twigs began to shoot up. And without long, they grew big enough for tea leaf harvesting.

Chen’s re-plantation of Da Hong Pao was successful. Soon, oolong tea farmers in the area all came for a batch of Da Hong Pao saplings

Today, the area grows as many as 40,000 acres of Da Hong Pao with the its annual production reaching 1,700 tons.

In the meanwhile, another tea expert went aboard and started to improve the ‘texture’ of Da Hong Pao. Master Zhang Tian Fu, who is 101 year old now, has been studying Chinese oolong tea since he was young. And even someone as adept as him didn’t know the mysterious recipe for Da Hong Pao processing.

Although the name of Da Hong Pao was a common coin in China, few Chinese knew how to make it. The area where the original Da Hong Pao tea trees grow used to be the property of a nearby Buddhist monastery. For centuries, only the abbots knew the existence of the six tea trees and they carefully preserve the secret till their death.

That’s not the case anymore today, as fans from around the world come to venerate the six Da Hong Pao mother trees and get a peek into its once mysterious processing techniques.

And you, too, can brew yourself a perfect cup at home with ease and delight.