Zhegu Tea (Hainan Wild Shrub Tea)

Also called shanku tea or maocha, zhegu tea is a wild-shrub herbal infusion unique to Hainan, not a true Camellia tea; its leaves are dried and bound with coconut palm leaves into round beads a few centimetres across, brewing to a clear liquor with intense herbal aroma and a long sweet finish.

A folk tale tells of a farmer in Wanning whose pet hill partridge fell ill, recovered after being given mountain-bitter tea picked on Dongshan ridge, and the tea took the name "zhegu" (partridge). The Hainanese have drunk it for a long time, with bundles hanging in nearly every farmhouse and some two centuries of popular use; the old-dad teahouses and noodle shops of Sanya often serve it to guests.

A few beads are placed in a pot and steeped in boiling water, drunk alone or blended into herbal-tea recipes; the liquor is golden with a clean, herbaceous sweetness, a cooling drink the Hainanese sip through the year to temper the hot, damp climate, often chilled in summer.

The rosary-like beads bound in coconut palm, the intense herbal aroma and the heat-clearing effect are what mark zhegu tea apart from any other tea.