After Longjing and Wuyishan, Anxi was the third well known tea area I visited in China. Anxi is famous for Tieguanyin or Iron Goddess oolong. Anxi is a county about 50 kilometers north of Xiamen. I booked a hotel on 805 Datong Road, which was by coincidence on a major tea sellers road. Before I arrived in Anxi I had a romantic idea about the tea village. The village was in fact a rather large city with many high rise buildings.

But I arrived late in the evening. It was a bit of a hassle to reach my hotel. There were no taxi’s in Quanzhou. Well, not entirely true, the taxi’s where men on motorbikes. I took bus instead, which got stuck in traffic almost instantly. Gridlocked in the afternoon rush hour. After checking into my hotel pretty much every restaurant was closed. I walked into a street side restaurant, which indeed had closed, but they had some duck stew left while tomorrow’s duck stew was already on the fire. The owner had to run cross the street to get some rice and soup for me. The beer was not kept in the fridge and was too warm to drink.

Chinese Tea Capital

The next morning I visited the whole sales tea market called Chinese Tea Capital on Hebin North Road, Anxi County. Farmers bring fresh oolong to the market in big plastic bags. At that moment I wasn’t sure about the quality of the tea which was being sold. Later I learned that it was not the premium teas which end up at the market. Still, it was serious business, with potential buyers smelling and tasting the teas spilling tea leaves all over the place.

Just outside the tea market there are small shops in where farmers sell the tea directly. These teas are a step up in quality, but still very affordable. You can have a proper tea tasting session. I walked into one of the shops. The daughter of the owner did the talking. I asked to taste two teas: a Tieguanyin - of course - and a roasted oolong tea. Tieguanyin is the Chinese translation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and there is an origin myth connected to the Tieguanyin tea. The owner prepared both teas for me.

By the time I arrived in Anxi I had a serious cold. My sense of smell went out of the window. I simply decided to buy both teas and back home in Amsterdam I was quite happy with my choice. The daughter of the tea farmer sent me some photos of the farm - and presumably her father - via WeChat. My trip resembled Phileas Fogg’s journey. The tea villages high in the mountains are difficult to reach without a car. Buses run services into the mountains but they are slow. I didn’t have a spare day.