Tieguanyin
famous oolong tea, one of top-10 Chinese teas
Tieguanyin (simplified Chinese: 铁观音; traditional Chinese: 鐵觀音; lit. 'Iron Guanyin') is a variety of Chinese oolong tea that originated in the 19th century in Anxi in Fujian province. Tieguanyin produced in different areas of Anxi have different gastronomic characteristics.
Name
The tea is named after the Chinese Goddess of Mercy Guanyin, Guanyin is an embodiment of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva. Other spellings and names include "Ti Kuan Yin", "Tit Kwun Yum", "Ti Kwan Yin", "Iron Buddha", "Iron Goddess Oolong", and "Tea of the Iron Bodhisattva". It is also known in its abbreviated form as "TGY".
Legends
There are two legends behind this tea: Wei and Wang.
Wei legend
Modern scholarship agrees that Tieguanyin originated in Anxi, Fujian, during the Qing dynasty, and that multiple legends exist—one of which features the devout farmer Wei Yin receiving guidance from Guanyin in a dream. This legend is not historically verifiable, but it is culturally influential and commonly retold.
According to the most popular folk legend about the origin of Tieguanyin tea, which is widely circulated in China and Taiwan, during the Yongzheng era of the Qing dynasty there lived an elderly tea farmer named Wei Yin in Xiping, Anxi, Fujian.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tieguanyin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.