Wudang Dao Tea Firing Technique

The Wudang Dao tea firing technique reaches far back, renowned for a thousand years and once producing Ming-dynasty tribute tea. Ancient monks chose tea plants in the spirit of Shennong tasting the hundred herbs and fired tea with a craft likened to Laozi's alchemy, weaving Daoist thought through every step of planting, picking and making. It entered the second Hubei provincial ICH list in 2009.

The craft spans plucking, withering, kill-green, rolling, drying and aroma-raising, all done by hand in an iron wok, where minute differences in heat and touch decide the finished tea's style, following the principles of "reading the tea to make the tea" and adapting to the day's weather, in step with the Daoist creed of following nature and balancing yin and yang.

The Wudang Dao tea firing technique fuses Daoist culture with traditional Chinese tea craft, an important vessel for studying the link between Daoism and tea culture and the highland tea tradition of northwestern Hubei, and its Wudang Dao tea brand is known at home and abroad.