White Tea

White. Tea is slightly fermented, only involving adjustment and drying processes."Three White "should be observed when picking white tea leaves. "Three White" means the one shoot and two leaves should al be covered with white hairs. Leaves made this way are white all over, which gives rise to the name of white tea. In Tang and Song dynasties, people regarded white tea as very valuable, but at that time, white tea was just a rare kind of tea tree whose leaves were white, not the white tea we know today. White Hair Silver Needle and White Peony produced in Fujian are representatives of white tea.
In addition to the above six major types of tea, there are also Tight pressed tea and Scented tea produced by re-processing the leaves. Tight-pressed tea comes from tight pressing crude tea leaves after steaming them in high temperature. This kind of tea can be divided into tea cake, tea brick, tea roll and other groups according to their shape. Tuo tea of Yunnan outstands in this kind. Scented tea, with its history of over 1, 000 years, comes from drinking edible flowers and tea leaves together.
People in Qing Dynasty liked making scented tea themselves. They spread crumbled calcium oxide at the jar bottom, cover it with two layers of bamboo leaves, and heap flowers on the bamboo leaves. The calcium oxide is highly water absorptive, so it can absorb the water contained in the flowers. Flowers that have been through this process are then cooked together with tea leaves. The most common scented tea-jasmine tea-is very popular in Beijing and Tianjin.