Tea drinking，a 4,700-year-old habit for the Chinese people has become a deep spiritual existence with deep cultural connotations as is evidenced by the fact that the Chinese people would introduce the habit of drinking tea wherever they go The Chinese people not only make tea and taste tea but also communicate and appreciate the traditional tea culture As the saying goes Cultivation of the heart and nature is all in this tea pot no matter how big the world is Jiangsu has been a sacred place for tea production since ancient times and its tea-drinking fashion is outstanding showing the essence of tea culture of “one tea and one pot”
Zou Yujia , national tea specialist There is a very famous green tea in Suzhou called Biluochun It is one of the top ten famous tea brands in the country Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty named it “Biluochun” after he drank this tea during his southern tour Its shape is curled like a snail or luo literally hence the name luo for the second character
It is a variety of green tea produced before the Qingming or the early spring hence “Biluochun” We pour water into the teapot the approximate water temperature is about 80 degrees take about 1.5g to 2g of tea and put it into the teapot We call it the “up-casting method” This method of tea making allows us to taste the sweetness of the tea and help produce saliva and slake thirst without the strong bitterness
Biluochun’s tea-making technique emphasizes the process of the tea not leaving the hand the tea not leaving the pot Kneading frying and stir-frying the tea through continuous operation until the tea is fried and ready for drink It has become an outstanding representative of
the traditional Chinese curly tea technique In 2011 it was included in the third batch of the National Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty The Chinese tea culture shifted from the way of tasting tea to the form of tea sets Since then and has been popular for hundreds of years until it finally integrated with tea culture and complemented each other Yixing Jiangsu’s “pottery capital” is rich in a special kind of clay which is called purple sand or Zisha due to its purple When fired into utensils the purple clay has good water absorption and air permeability The varieties include pots bottles basins and sculptures The pottery craftsmen in Yixing continue to derive nourishment from the Chinese tea culture court culture and folk art and make them enjoyable and useful Yixing Zisha is therefore world-famous for its long history and superb artistic achievements and was included in the first batch of the National Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
