Huang Mei Gui Oolong Tea

Origin of Oolong Tea / Wulong Tea / Wu-long Tea

It is said that Oolong tea first began to be produced at Mt. Wu Yi Shan in Fujian Province at the end of the Ming Dynasty about 400 years ago. Legend has it that the first cultivator of the tea was named Wu Liang. One day, Wu Liang went home after he had picked several pounds of mountain tea and caught a river deer. In the evening, he was busy with killing the river deer, and didn't have enough time to dry the green tea. The next day, he found the tea in the basket had fermented on the way back and after having been stored in the basket the whole night. He fried the tea at once. To his surprise, he found that the tea tasted very mellow, with no bitter and astringent taste. Soon Wu Liang taught his fellow villagers how to make the tea. Almost everyone in his village liked the fermented tea and they named it Wu Liang tea. In the south Fujian dialect, liang and long are two homophonic words. As time went by the tea was called Wulong tea by later generations in China, and Oolong in foreign countries.