Chinese green tea: Longjing, Biluochun and the rest

What makes a tea ‘green’

All true tea comes from the same plant; the category depends on processing. China divides its teas into six categories: green, yellow, dark, white, oolong and black. With reprocessed teas such as flower-scented teas added, UNESCO counts over 2,000 tea products. The craft and the social customs around them were inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2022.

Green tea is the one that is not allowed to oxidise. Since the early Ming dynasty most Chinese green tea has been pan-fired in a dry wok; before that it was steamed, as most Japanese tea still is. Chinese makers also oven-fire, basket-fire, tumble-dry and sun-dry their green teas, and a few steamed teas survive, such as Enshi Yulu from Hubei. Steaming is what gives Japanese green teas their sweeter, grassier taste.

Loose-leaf green tea has been China’s most popular form of tea since at least the Southern Song dynasty, and it still is. In 2025 green tea made up 59.03% of China’s dry tea output; black tea, the next largest, was 15.65%. For the other categories, see black tea, oolong, white tea and pu-erh.[4][5][17][2]

Longjing (Dragon Well) and West Lake Longjing

Longjing (龙井茶, lóngjǐng chá) takes its name from a historic well near Longjing village in the hills west of Hangzhou’s West Lake. It became an imperial tribute tea under the Qing; local legend says the Qianlong Emperor honoured 18 tea bushes near Hu Gong Temple. The leaves are pan-fired and pressed flat by hand in the wok, which gives Longjing its flat, sword-like shape.

Not all Longjing is West Lake Longjing. West Lake Longjing (西湖龙井) has been a national geographical-indication protected product since 2001, limited to a defined zone around the lake; Wikipedia gives it as 168 square kilometres. Within it, five traditional growing areas are named after peaks: Lion (狮), Dragon (龙), Cloud (云), Tiger (虎) and Plum (梅). Meijiawu is the largest producing village. Tea from the wider area just outside is sold as Qiantang Longjing and is generally cheaper. Hangzhou has been approved to set up a protection demonstration zone, and the city reports tracking down more than 490,000 bags of fake Longjing.

Timing matters as much as place. Mingqian (明前, ‘before Qingming’) tea is picked before the Qingming festival, around 5 April, and is considered the best; Yuqian (雨前) tea, picked before the Grain Rain solar term in mid-April, is also highly regarded. The best picking runs from late March into April. Common cultivars include the old local Qunti bushes, Longjing No. 43 and the early-budding Wuniuzao.[6][7]

Biluochun, Huangshan Maofeng, Lu’an Guapian and Anji Bai Cha

Biluochun (碧螺春) grows on the Dongting hills by Lake Tai in Suzhou, Jiangsu. Only tender shoots are picked, between the spring equinox and Grain Rain, and the leaves are rolled into tight spirals; a kilogram holds roughly 14,000 to 15,000 shoots. Tea bushes share the gardens with fruit trees, which cover 25% to 35% of the ground. Its old local name was 吓煞人香, ‘scary fragrance’; a Qing chronicle credits the Kangxi Emperor with the more elegant name ‘green snail spring’ on a visit to Lake Tai.

Huangshan Maofeng (黄山毛峰) comes from around Huangshan, the Yellow Mountain, in Anhui. Only the new bud and the leaf beside it are picked, ideally before Qingming; the name refers to the fine white hairs on the leaves and to their peak-like shape. Huangshan city produced over 45,000 tonnes of tea in 2022.

Lu’an Guapian (六安瓜片), from Lu’an at the foot of the Dabie Mountains in western Anhui, is unusual: it is made from single leaves, with no buds or stalks, shaped like melon seeds. It is a baked green tea, roasted in a basket over a charcoal fire at 160–180°C, with the basket turned every two to three seconds for 120 to 160 rounds.

Anji Bai Cha (安吉白茶) is a green tea that happens to be called ‘white’. It comes from Anji county in Zhejiang, and its making techniques were listed as national intangible cultural heritage in 2011. The name comes from the leaf: the cultivar’s new shoots are pale yellow-white below about 20°C and turn green as the weather warms, and the pale leaves are high in free amino acids such as theanine. It is processed as green tea, not as white tea.[8][9][10][18][11][12][13]

Gunpowder tea and China’s green tea exports

Most of the tea China sells abroad is green. In 2024 China exported about 0.37 million tonnes of tea, roughly 10% of what it grew, and green tea made up 86.6% of that export volume. The largest single market was Morocco, which took 80,584 tonnes.

Gunpowder tea (珠茶, zhūchá, ‘pearl tea’) is the style most of that trade is known for. The leaves are withered, heated and rolled into small pellets, by machine for all but the top grades; shiny, small, tightly rolled pellets suggest good quality. Zhejiang is one of the producing regions, and Pingshui gunpowder is the original and most common type. Exported to the Maghreb, gunpowder is the base for North African mint tea, brewed with mint and sugar. Export grades carry numbers: 3505AAA is the highest, 9375 relatively low.[3][14]