Tai Ping Hou Kui

Description

Harvest Date :  Mid April 2021

Growing Region : Houken, Huangshan

Elevation : 650m

Tea Bush/Varietal : Shidacha cultivar

Tai Ping Hou Kui is one of the Top Ten Chinese Famous Teas. It is one of the very few Chinese green tea which is made from grown tea leaves, instead of the very tender tea buds and leaves. It is produced in the Taiping County of Anhui. Taiping County was changed to the current name Huangshan District in 1983.

Tai Ping Hou Kui was invented around 1900. At that time the tea business in the nearby cities of Taiping County – Shanghai, Nanjing, and Yangzhou, was very good. The customers demanded high-quality green tea. The tea farmer Wang Kui Cheng 王魁成 (nicknamed Wang Lao Er) lived in Hou Gang (猴岗) Taiping. He was very experienced in the processing of tea and decided to use high-quality material and refined processing to produce a batch of premium green tea to meet the demand of his customers from big cities. The highest tea garden in Monkey Hill is called Phoenix Peak (Feng Huang Jian 凤凰尖) with an altitude of 750m, and he asked his men to pluck tender long shoots of newly opened one bud three leaves from there. He used all his talents to process the tea. The tea was made and the quality was fantastic. His customers called this tea Wang Lao Er Kui Jian, which means “The champion tip of Wang Lao Er” (In Chinese, kui 魁 means No.1, Champion and coincidentally the name of the inventor also contained the word Kui). Later, because the main places in which this tea is produced were Monkey Hill (Hou Gang 猴岗) and Monkey Hole (Hou Keng 猴坑), and the inventor’s name had the character Kui, the tea was formally named Tai Ping Hou Kui.