Compared with green tea, black tea is a little descendant. Its origin is said to be a coincidence in the late Ming Dynasty: Tongmu Village in Wuyi Mountain, Fujian Province, is a strategically located and difficult of access, and has been an important military checkpoint since ancient times. During a tea leaf picking season, the Northern Army passed by the tea factory, and soldiers slept on the tea green. When the army left, the tea green had been rubbed red and began to ferment. Tea farmers cannot bear to discard, so they twist the tea leaf, dry over a fire with Masson pine which abounds in the local place. Then they unexpectedly find that the tea made black and moist with a sweet-scented longan soup.
Black tea has a short history, but its legend is no less than green tea. In the 18th century, in the Anglo-Dutch war to seize the right to trade at sea, black tea was a lucrative trade product; in the Boston tea dumping incident, black tea became an innocent victim; modern China also had a huge trade surplus due to the large export of black tea and other commodities, and later on, causing the import of British opium…
Today, black tea has spread all over the world, but no matter where it grows, please do not forget that their native place is in Wuyi Mountain, Fujian Province, their ancestors are called “Zhengshan race”. There are poems saying: Who holds the black tea for a hundred years, there are Zhengshan races in Tongmu Checkpoint. Although Jiuqu scenery is good, it’s better to come here and taste the Wuyi black tea.