Appreciating Tie Guan Yin tea. [Photo: CRIENGLISH.com]

After the market we visited a showcase center of Wei Yin, one of the best- known Tie Guan Yin brands. According to the president Wei Yuede, the processing craft has been passed down by the Wei family since his ancestor, Wei Yin, discovered the first Tie Guan Yin tree in 1723. Today, Wei Yuede, a ninth-generation descendant, runs a Tie Guan Yin conglomerate and has been named a national inheritor of Tie Guan Yin craftsmanship by intangible cultural heritage protection authorities.

At Wei's showcase center, which he calls "Garden of Tie Guan Yin Culture," we learned the basic process of making Tie Guan Yin and watched a tea ceremony before tasting different types of the tea. The most impressive type was called "tan bei," or wood coal-baked, whose tea leaves had been baked with wood coal for almost a day. It tasted a little stronger than other types, and amazingly, had a coffee-like smell.

Even more amazing, despite its strong taste, "tan bei" tea is particularly good for a weak stomach.

Having found the perfect type of tea for me, I went back to the hotel with three big boxes of "tan bei" Tie Guan Yin.

(CRI August 28, 2009)