Anxi—Oolong Tea Capital of China

Abstract

December 16, 1773, angry American colonists, disguised as Native Americans, protested against the British tea tax by throwing 342 crates of Fujian tea into Boston Harbor. Thus, Fujian helped pave the way for American independence. While it is not certain that Anxi tea was one of the 5 kinds of Fujian tea at the Boston Tea Party, Anxi tea was even then very popular in the West.

No Fujian Tea, No U.S.A.?

December 16, 1773, angry American colonists, disguised as Native Americans, protested against the British tea tax by throwing 342 crates of Fujian tea into Boston Harbor. Thus, Fujian helped pave the way for American independence. While it is not certain that Anxi tea was one of the 5 kinds of Fujian tea at the Boston Tea Party, Anxi tea was even then very popular in the West.

Fujian has long been China’s tea capital, and Quanzhou’s Anxi County the chief source of Oolong tea, which at one time was so precious in Europe that only royalty drank it. There are many legends about how tea drinking came about. One says that the Indian monk who introduced Zen Buddhism to China around 530 cut off his eyelids so he would not fall asleep while meditating, and where the eyelids fell, a plant with leaves shaped like eyelids sprang up. And as luck would have it, these leaves, when brewed, created a stimulating beverage that further helped both the eyelidless master and his pupils stay awake during meditation.

It is a nice story, but I don’t see eye-to-eye with it because Chinese drank tea long before Bodhidharma played his eye-opening prank. Many Chinese believe tea drinking began almost 5,000 years ago with the “father of agriculture”, the almost mythical Emperor Shen Nong (2,737–2,697 B.C.). The first real proof of tea drinking comes from the tombs in Tibet and Xi’an that proved tea was consumed over 2,000 years ago during the Han Dynasty, and the doctor and surgeon, Hua Tuo (華佗, 140–208) wrote about the use of tea in a medical text “Huatuo Food Sutra”《华佗食经》 . The use of Tea in ancient Tibet proves that the Silk Road was well established over 2,000 years ago, and tea slowly increased in popularity until the Tang Dynasty, when it became one of the great national pastimes of China—along with poetry, painting, calligraphy, music, martial arts, and all of those other peculiarly Chinese practices perfected over the past 5,019 years.

Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.

—J. B. Priestley

Chinese claim that tea not only tastes good but also cures everything from bad eyes to impotence, and was a chief ingredient in the Taoist’s elixir of immortality. Tea must also be highly addictive, because we foreign devils fought two Opium Wars and forced the drug on China at gunpoint, for a century, just so we could balance our trade deficit and pay for our tea (and silk, and porcelain).

Tea fanned the flames of American independence in Boston, when colonists threw it overboard during the Boston Tea Party. Tea made the Hatter Mad. But the tea that tantalizes “Laowai” and “Laonei” alike nowadays is a far cry from the concoctions Chinese used to brew up (Fig. 13.1).

Fig. 13.1

Anxi Tea Ceremony

While Chinese abhor foreigners’ adulteration of quality tea with cream and sugar, only 1,500 years ago (yesterday by Chinese’s standards), the citizens of the Celestial Empire added not just sugar but also rice, ginger, salt, orange peel, spices—even onions. Fortunately, either tea tastes better nowadays or Chinese are inured to it because except for the Tibetans (who still add rancid yak butter), and groups like western Fujian Hakkas (who add pounded meat and veggies), the only thing added to tea nowadays is pure water, preferably spring water, and if not that, then running river water. And it is served up in elegant yet simple Minnan tea ceremony, which many consider the precursor to the elaborate Japanese Tea Ceremony. But whereas Japanese have almost made a religion of preparing, serving and sipping tea, the Chinese ceremony has retained a pragmatic simplicity. Chinese do tend to stand on ceremony about a lot of things, but when it comes to food and drink, their primary aim is to please not protocol but the palate.

So, while you’re in Anxi, or anywhere else in southern Fujian, make sure you take in the Minnan Tea Ceremony. Who knows? It might just cure you of everything that ails you.

And while you are in Xiamen or just about anywhere else in China, drop by the award-winning Huaxiangyuan Tea shops, run by three generations of an Anxi tea family.

Tao of Tea

Chinese tea lovers never developed an intricate tea ceremony like chanoyu in Japan—which, by the way, they tend not to like because its elaborate stylization is quite contrary to the Taoistic feeling of spontaneity and carefree informality they associate with tea drinking. Nevertheless, there is definitely a Chinese art of tea. It is known as “Ch’a-shu”.

...Tea is at its best when enjoyed in pleasant surroundings, whether indoors or out, where the atmosphere is tranquil, the setting harmonious... Nevertheless, a perfect combination of these five—setting, company, tea, water and tea-things—will fail to work its magic in the absence of the special attitude required to do them justice.

The key to that attitude is mindfulness...

When the mind, having freed itself from the trammels of past and future, is fully concentrated on the Here and Now, a whole range of pleasures involving ears, eyes, nose, palate and mood can be enjoyed by two or three people who have come together to make and drink fine tea. However, that enjoyment would fade in the presence of reverential silence, stiff formality or self-consciousness.

—John Blofeld

Anxi Tea—Elixir of Life?

“We Told You So...” 1.3 billion times! Chinese are indefatigable proselytizers, especially of Chinese medicine and tea. If I so much as sniffle, every neighbor, colleague and student on campus accosts me with sure-fire Chinese herbal cures, or compel me to swallow two dozen tiny black pellets made from poisonous toad venom (I kid you not!). One fellow assured me that a patent medicine cured colds, guaranteed, in three days. I asked why, if this was true, his own daughter had a cold for over a week. He looked at me as if I were proof of why some animals ate their young, and said: “It was two different colds.”

Likewise, all of my Chinese friends feel compelled to recite a litany they no doubt learned in school: “Coffee’s bad for you but tea is healthy.” And how I hate a smug, “I told you so”—especially 1.3 billion of them. Scientists in the US and Japan have discovered that when it comes to fighting cancer, green tea is twice as effective as red wine, 35 times more effective than vitamin E, and 100 times more effective than vitamin C at protecting cells and their DNA. Of course, that’s just a restrained Western scientist’s viewpoint. Chinese enthusiasts believe the leaf is the long sought-after Taoist elixir of immortality.

Five Hundred-Year-Old Home! (Anxi, Hutou)

Anxi Tea Tackles Cancer? Anxi “Chinese Long-Life Tea”, which won 1st prize in the 2001 Fujian Province Tea Competition, is a popular “medicinal” tea. One website claims that this supposedly 2,200-year-old tea blend (Anxi wasn’t even around 2,200 years ago!) regenerates the body at cellular level, attacking free-radical onslaughts, delaying cellular aging and detoxifying the liver, as well as “cure nervous disorders, arteriosclerosis, cardio-vascular failures, premature aging, divers skin conditions including boils, kidney and liver insufficiencies, rheumatoid arthritis, and gout”.

As if reading my mind, the author went on to say:

Regrettably, recalcitrant Western medicine does not only reject any remedy that lists a too splendid array of claims, but will violently antagonize its spread, branding it as a sheer hoax. Which is the reason why Anxi tea is still widely unknown in the Western world.

I must rank among the recalcitrant Westerners, because when they claimed that folks in Siberia and Ecuador, as well as China, live up to 120 years because they drink Anxi tea, I wondered how on earth those remote people got hold of it. Amazon.com, perhaps?

Tea Tours. Anxi tea is a big business nowadays, and produced in sprawling tea processing factories, but you can still run across peasant households producing fine teas using time-honored methods and homemade machines. You’ll need a local or a guide to help you find them, but it is worth the search, especially when they pull out their cheap little red clay tea sets and, with care and reverence, brew up some homegrown leaf.

Your best bet to find such a family is to visit the smaller villages like Longmen (Dragon’s Gate, 龙门) south of Anxi county proper. And a suggestion: take a generous bag of candy for the kids and you’ll have little friends for life.

Another suggestion: taking photos! Every family wants a good photo of the elderly to display after they pass on, but an 8 inch x 10 inch costs a small fortune for a peasant household. As you travel throughout the countryside, take photos, get their addresses, and mail them a copy. You’ll have a friend for life—or maybe even longer!

Fujian China International Travel Service (CITS) provides guided Tea Tours of farms, factories, markets, and the Anxi Tea Museum.

Touring Anxi. There’s more to Anxi than tea! Every time I visit this rural county, I discover new historical, cultural and natural treasures. For instance, I’ve visited the remote township of Hutou (湖头) at least a dozen times because it is the hometown of Lixi, our “baomu” (household helper, 保姆), who has been with us since 1988 and is now the 5th member of the family. But the only thing I really knew about Hutou was that it produced south Fujian’s best rice noodles (mifentiao, 米粉条). Then last year I learned that Lixi was born in a marvelous 500-year-old earthen building.

The deeper I delve, the more fascinating Anxi becomes—and it changes each time I visit, shifting shape with the seasons and the unique cultural and religious traditions and festivals that are celebrated monthly (probably even weekly).

Half the town turned out for this celebration, and the other half of the town joined in when the foreigner showed up in a Toyota!

Prime Minister Li Guangdi’s Former Residence (Li Guangdi Guju) in Hutou (湖头). I had visited Hutou a dozen times or more, never imagining that this little backwater was home to an illustrious Qing Dynasty Prime Minister, Li Guangdi, who recommended to the emperor that General Shi Lang be the man in charge of ousting Koxinga’s descendants from Taiwan.

The 3,120-square-meter home, first built in 1698 (37th year of Emperor Kangxi’s reign, in case you’re dying to know) is in Hu’er Village, Hutou Township, Anxi County (Anxi Xian, Hutou Zhen, Hu’er Cun).

Qingshui Cliff Temple (Qingshuiyan Temple). One of China’s most picturesque temples, this rambling three-story affair was built in 1083 right up the side of Penglai Village’s densely forested Pengshan Hill, clinging to the hillside rather like the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. After it burned down in 1277, monks raised money for the 12-year renovation project that was completed in 1317 (Fig. 13.2).

Fig. 13.2

Anxi Qingshuiyan Temple

Qingshui Cliff Temple is a very holy place for Buddhists, and its incense burner has been used to light incense for over 100 burners scattered about Taiwan. A brochure claims that Qingshui attracts over 600,000 visitors annually, and I can see why. Nice temple—but for me, the biggest attraction is the incredible scenery, and the massive trees. An ancient camphor tree is so large it takes half a dozen people holding hands to reach around it. The ancient sentinel is called “Facing North” because when the tree heard that the Song Dynasty general Yue Fei (岳飞) had been murdered by a treacherous official, the tree held out all its branches to the north to express its sorrow.

Nine Peaks Cliff is another of Penglai Town’s cliffhanging sites. Built in 1415, during the time of Muslim Navigator Zheng Hé, its eight official sites include Line Mountains, Three Tablets, Lions, and Huge Rock (catchy name, that one). The real attraction, for me, is the surrealist scenery, with fog-enshrouded peaks covered with forests of bamboo and camphor, and villages nestled in the valleys. But Chinese like the calligraphy, the number-one piece probably being the poem by Ming Dynasty Premier Zhang Ruitu (张瑞图), which reads: “A thousand tree branches have but one trunk, numerous branches of the Changjiang River (the Yangtze) have but one source (乔木千枝原为一本, 长江万派总是同源).” It is particularly appropriate because the little town of Penglai is the source of many streams of overseas Chinese, many of whom have returned to their ancestral homeland to help rebuild it.

Like Qingshui Cliff Temple, (and just about every other temple in Quanzhou, as well as Christian churches and the Muslim Mosque), Nine Peaks Cliff has been renovated with the aid of generous donations from members of Penglai’s over 100,000 overseas Chinese community. They had good reasons for leaving Anxi, and fortunately, even better reasons for returning.

Anxi Fights the Poverty Amidst Plenty. Anxi is the ancestral home for well over 700,000 overseas Chinese, mainly in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Nearly one-fourth of Anxi residents have overseas relatives or have lived abroad, and 2 million Taiwanese are of Anxi ancestry. Anxi folks cut the apron strings and went abroad because Anxi, though blessed with rich natural resources, was also impoverished in the old days.

Anxi has long been famous not just for tea (the best coming from Changkeng, Xiping and Gande) but also for other resources like fruits, minerals, and the forests of Gande, Fengtian, Lutian and Longjuan townships. In northern Anxi, Jiandou and Weili produce anthracite, Qingyang has manganese, and Pantian mines produce ore with over 55-percent iron content. The area also has some beautiful crystals.

Anxi Serves up “Chicken Soup for the Soul!” My farmer friends in Anxi’s Hutou and Jiandou know that I’ve collected rocks, gems and crystals since I was a child, and several times have phoned to say: “Professor, we’ve found another rock for you!”

When I was ill a few years back, two Hutou friends made the long (and costly) trek to Xiamen bearing gifts for both body and soul. They presented me with a live mountain chicken, which they had lugged on the bus for hours (it was for medicinal broth), and a beautiful crystal that a farmer had found in a field and saved for me.

Anxi people are rich indeed—at least in the ways that count.

Though rich in resources, Anxi was until recently impoverished economically. In the mid 1980s, Fujian’s poorest county was Fu’an; Anxi was second. The primary cause of their poverty was the county’s remote location. Even in the mid 1990s, the bus from mountainous Anxi to Xiamen’s markets took eight hours, but new concrete roads, many built with the aid of overseas Chinese, have cut the journey to two hours.

Markets are now mushrooming for Anxi’s mountain mushrooms and edible fungi, which are excellent income generators for forested areas because they don’t require a large initial investment or long gestation period.

Anxi Anti-Poverty Strategies. My little Anxi friends have a much brighter future today, thanks to Anxi’s anti-poverty strategies, which have earned it honor as a model county. Anxi’s strategies include measures like providing capital and expertise to impoverished villages, preferential policies for mountain-area development, and an emphasis upon trade and investment.

Anti-poverty teams have helped set up local enterprises and mushroom farms, renovate existing enterprises, improve mining operations, raise tea production, combat soil erosion, start fisheries, overcome transportation problems and find markets both in Fujian and throughout China.

After selecting Longmen (Dragon Gate, 龙门) Township as a “Science and Technology Anti-Poverty Demonstration Site”, Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences sent in experts to improve agriculture and livestock practices. Over a four-year period, household incomes reportedly grew 160%.

The Oolong Tea Research Institute and Oolong Tea Quality Control Center have helped improve teas, gained footholds in lucrative markets like Shanghai, and exhibited the tea in national and international exhibitions.

Thanks to the concerted efforts of Anxi County, Quanzhou, and Fujian Provincial Government, Anxi farmers can now have their tea and drink it too! Of course, it helps a lot that Anxi people aren’t just waiting for aid but taking matters into their own hands with grassroots movements—like the Longmen Bridge project.

FormalPara The Book of Tea

Kakuzo Okakura’s The Book of Tea, published in 1906, is a marvelous little treatise on the influence of tea on Asian culture, of the differences between the East and West, and of why we should try to narrow the gaps. A reviewer wrote of the book: “The words linger with you long after you have finished, and tea, once an ordinary beverage, acquires a soul—a source of peace.”

(Teaism influences) our home and habits, costume and cuisine, porcelain, lacquer, painting—our very literature...the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Lao Tzu, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.

The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness and childishness of the East to him... When will the West understand, or try to understand, the East? We Asiatics are often appalled by the curious web of facts and fancies which has been woven concerning us. We are pictured as living on the perfume of the lotus, if not on mice and cockroaches. It is either impotent fanaticism or else abject voluptuousness. Indian spirituality has been derided as ignorance, Chinese sobriety as stupidity, Japanese patriotism as the result of fatalism. It has been said that we are less sensible to pain and wounds on account of the callousness of our nervous organization!

Why not amuse yourselves at our expense? Asia returns the compliment. There would be further food for merriment if you were to know all that we have imagined and written about you. All the glamour of the perspective is there, all the unconscious homage of wonder, all the silent resentment of the new and undefined. You have been loaded with virtues too refined to be envied, and accused of crimes too picturesque to be condemned. Our writers in the past—the wise men who knew—informed us that you had bushy tails somewhere hidden in your garments, and often dined off a fricassee of newborn babes! Nay, we had something worse against you: We used to think you the most impracticable people on the earth, for you were said to preach what you never practiced.

Such misconceptions are fast vanishing amongst us. Commerce has forced the European tongues on many an Eastern port. Asiatic youths are flocking to Western colleges for the equipment of modern education. Our insight does not penetrate your culture deeply, but at least we are willing to learn. Some of my compatriots have adopted too much of your customs and too much of your etiquette, in the delusion that the acquisition of stiff collars and tall silk hats comprised the attainment of your civilization.

Pathetic and deplorable as such affectations are, they evince our willingness to approach the West on our knees. Unfortunately, the Western attitude is unfavorable to the understanding of the East.

Perhaps I betray my own ignorance of the Tea Cult by being so outspoken. Its very spirit of politeness exacts that you say what you are expected to say, and no more. But I am not to be a polite Teaist. So much harm has been done already by the mutual misunderstanding of the New World and the Old that one need not apologize for contributing his tithe to the furtherance of a better understanding.

Let us stop the continents from hurling epigrams at each other... We have developed along different lines, but there is no reason why one should not supplement the other?