Today's Tea:
Iron Goddess of Mercy.
An Oolong tea, low in caffeine, with a nice nutty flavor.
Originated in Anxi county, China. Also referred to as Teguanyin.
I'm learning that there is a great deal of historic folklore, around tea origin myths after googling the origin of this impressively named tea. Apparently there are several versions of this story, I'm including the Buddhist version below (and in comment because it's too long for a post. I love the name, especially as my last name in Italian refers to iron, but that's a whole other story.
In a time of great strife, when warlords enforced arbitrary laws and armies trampled the fields of farmers, ritual and propriety were easily thrown aside to make room for the barest essentials of survival.
There was a farmer in Anxi county, working the rocky mountain soil and struggling to make ends meet for his family.
Farmers did not own the land they worked, and so he was forced to turn over most of his crop of cabbage and other vegetables to the local lord.
One evening around dusk, the devout farmer was out foraging further from home than he'd usually venture. Deep in a bamboo grove, he spotted a fallen structure entirely overgrown in vines, he jumped when he saw Guanyin's eyes gazing out at him. Her brows were bent in compassion, and her eyes were outlined in gold.
He cleared away some of the vines. He revealed a large statue of Guanyin, tipped over and leaning against fallen timbers.
This iron casting was rusting from neglect, but fine gold detail work and deep blue and pink enamel was still clear through the folds of Guanyin's robes.
He vowed to restore her forgotten shrine. ... Continued in post. …He hurried to the shrine. For the first time ever, he journeyed to the shrine before even going out to his fields. When he arrived, he saw Guanyin's statue lit up gold in a ray of morning light. At the foot of the statue grew seedlings he had never seen there before. The fragrant jade leaves were just like those his dream.
He recognized the plant from diagrams and pictures from old healers passing through town. These were tea seedlings
- a rarity enough on their own, but these were unlike any other. The medicinal tea of Shen Nong's Encyclopedia of Medicine was bitter and vegetal. These special leaves smelled like sweet honey and lotus.
The farmer picked a few leaves from the plants growing around the shrine and brought them home to his family.
Together, they brewed the fresh leaves in boiled spring water and passed around a bowl to taste Guanyin's grace.
The tea lifted them up and brought them a feeling of hope and renewed vigor. The water was thick and rich like drinking cream, the aroma like all the wildflowers of Anxi spring, and a sweet aftertaste that lingered all day.
As the tea plants grew throughout spring, they eventually flowered and made seeds. He gathered up all the seeds from the tea plants and cast them across the mountainside.
Legend has it that new fully-formed tea plants sprouted from the ground the instant the seeds touched the rocky Anxi soil. This land so challenging for crops was the perfect cradle for a new kind of tea - one sweeter and more aromatic anything anyone had seen before.
Soon, villagers in Anxi county were allowed to send a small tea harvest instead of food as their annual tax. Guanyin's gift truly brought happiness and comfort to Anxi. When officials came to collect the tea, they asked the farmers what to call it.
The people named Guanyin's gift Tie Guanyin, or Iron Goddess of Mercy, so that forever after people would remember the story of the iron Guanyin in her shrine. Only restoring the Iron Goddess to her rightful place could bring out the grace of the true goddess.
