White tea enjoys a long-standing history in China. A beautiful legend has it that in the period under the reign of Emperor Yao, a woman named Langu hid in Hongxue Cave of Taimu Mountain to avoid flames of war. During some year, measles was rampant around Taimu Mountain and local residents tried every means to treat the disease suffered by their kids, but ended in vain. Benevolent Langu was also worried and anxious about that. One day, she dreamed about the Immortal Elder of the South Pole who instructed her to find a sapling called green snow bud on the top of the Cave which was the remedy to cure epidemics. Langu woke up pleasantly and found the tea tree, and sent the dried green leaves to the sick children. As a result, the children recovered one after another before long. White tea mysteriously saved the entire village. Since then, Langu carefully cultivated the fairy tea and taught local residents to plant it. This is the origin of today’s white tea.

Delicate sprouts with more white fuzz on the back of the leaf are always picked up and dried in the sun or baked out by a slow fire without frying and rubbing during the processing, thus, completely reserving the white fuzz on the tea surface. That’s why the tea appears white. Then, boiling water is poured into a cup slowly where tea leaves are rising and falling slowly and gracefully like bamboo shoots after the spring rain. After being immersed in water, the sprout will become lucid and clear and appear silver green and mild. Qiqiang tea goes up and down and then the water shows an apricot yellow color. After the tea leaves fall to the bottom of cup gradually, you may take a sip. A fragrant flavor will be keenly felt, but tea leaves in the cup still stand upright. No wonder it is praised as “upright heart.”

Apart from light yellow tea water, and the fresh, mellow and tasty flavor, white tea is also featured by the visual feeling of being dressed in green. Cool and refreshing in nature, white tea is blessed with the effect of bringing down a fever and reducing internal heat. In this sense, many people regard it as a rare treasure.

Source: Confucius Institute Online