Even the emperors preferred Long Jing tea!

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Long Jing tea is probably the most popular variety of green Chinese tea, both in China and around the world. A famous water well gives Long Jing, Chinese for “Dragon Well,” tea it’s name.

Throughout antiquity, this well provided the only source of water when all other wells dried up during the hot summer.

Locals thought there must be a dragon down in the well, for a dragon was believed to be in charge of rain and water in ancient China.

Where does Maojian Chinese tea come from? How was it found? Is there a magical bird involved?

Legend says that a long time ago, there was a small mountain village where people lived in abundance and happiness.

However, a mysterious disease began to take its toll. Every day, there were people dying, and there wasn’t much the doctors could do.

There was one kind of tea leaves that could cure the disease. But to find it, they had to go over 99 mountains and travel across 99 rivers. No one dared to try the journey, except one young girl.

Determined to save her fellow villagers, the brave girl set out to find the tea. Day in and day out, she ran through the mountain trails. Finally, she made it to the sacred spot where the tea grew.

Yet she had become so ill and weak that she died at the side of the tea plant.

But she still had a job to finish. Miraculously, she turned into a bird, picked up the tea leaves in her beak, and embarked on her way back home.

She flew so fast that she arrived within one day’s time. The tea was brewed, everyone drank it, and all of the patients were cured.

The village was now saved. To remember the girl, villagers built a temple to her.

As you can guess, the herb that the girl had painfully looked for was Maojian Chinese tea. Some old folks still say that the curl of a Maojian tea leaf resembles the beak of the bird.