Chinese Green Tea
Types of Chinese Green Tea
There are countless types of green tea in China, including Yunwu, Longjing, Maofeng, Maojian, and Zhuyeqing. Their growing regions mainly lie in south China, like Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Henan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Hunan…. As the old saying goes: “A side water and soil, raises a party person.” The same is true of the tea. Different environment gives each kind of tea unique and exclusive flavor. Cloud mist green tea (Yunwu) can be called so only when it grows in the moisture weather all through the year.
Chinese Green Tea Benefits
The health benefits of Chinese green tea have been discussed ever since. The effective components in green tea, like TP (tea polyphenol), amino acid, and vitamincan are very helpful to people’ health in many aspects, which has been proved by modern research.
Anti-aging
TP (tea polyphenol) in green tea, featured good inoxidizaility, can help clear away free racicals from body, thus drinking green tea can delay senility.
Prevent cancer
When TP (tea polyphenol) and some other substances met, a chemical reaction takes place and a kind of catechinic acid is produced, which prevent body cell from being killed by toxin. Without harm from toxin, body cells would not have qualitative change, which to a certain degree can help prevent cancer.
Lose weight
Caffeine in green tea increases gastric secretion, promote digestion; in this sense it can help lose weight.
Protect and beautify skin
TP (tea polyphenol) has good water solubility, which helps get rid of skin grease and tighten pore on skin. What’s more, it can prevent skin from aging.
Tips on Green Tea Drinking
Although the benefits of drinking green tea are numerous, there are still some don’ts to be noticed:
4. Do not drink strong tea when you are suffering from some diseases like hepatopathy and lithiasis because it will aggravate the disease.
How to Make Chinese Green Tea
Step 1: Withering
Withering aims to destroy enzyme properties in fresh tea leaves and to remove part of water from the newly picked tea leaves. After the first step, with the evaporation of moisture from tea leaves, the tea flavor is much improved.
Step 2: Fixing (“kill-green”)
This step is to further remove the extra water and bitter smell in the leaves. There are many ways to fix the leaves: frying, steaming, baking, and drying in the sun. After this step, the bright green leaves turn dark green, hence it is called “kill green” in Chinese.
Step 3: Rolling
By rolling, the inner tea juice after fixing is squeezed out and covered on the surface of tea leaves to add the flavor of tea soup, and the volume of tea leaves is reduced through this step.
Step 4: Drying
The different ways of drying, like frying, baking and drying in the sun are all aiming to stabilize the final moisture content of the tea leaves and to stop fermentation, prevent mould growth, remove any grassy leaf taste and develop the tea's aroma.
Chinese Vs. Japanese Green Tea
1. Japanese green tea originated from Chinese green tea.
2. Japanese green tea ceremony is more complicated.
3. China has more green tea types than Japan, which has only two famous types, Matcha and Sencha.
4. Chinese green tea, with many different shapes, provides more diversity and beauty to tea lovers in their drinking process.
Further Reading:
10 Best Chinese Green Tea