Dong Fang Mei Ren - Eastern Beauty - Oolong Tea

The origins of this tea are shrouded in folklore. The prevailing story dates back to the 1930s, when a farmer who had been traveling returned to his tea garden only to find that it had been attacked by insects. Not wanting to waste his crop, he harvested it anyway and to his surprise the processed leaves produced an exceptional aroma. His nearby tea merchant was equally impressed and offered him double the usual price. When the farmer came back to his village to share his feat, nobody would believe him and thought he was bragging. As such, in the local Hakka dialect, this tea is called Peng Feng or Pong Fong, which translates to Huff and Puff, and otherwise known as Braggart’s tea. Whether true or not, this story is perhaps the first successful case of producing an insect-bitten tea and has since opened up a whole category of teas collectively labelled as Mi Xiang, which means Honey Fragrance. The tiny insect is now known to be the Jacobiasca formosana, aka the green leafhopper or tea