Huangshan Mao Feng 黄山毛峰

Editors · October 23, 2026 · 7 min read

Anhui's leading green tea is picked on the slopes around the Huangshan mountains. The leaf is fired briefly in a wok and finished over a fire in bamboo baskets, so the flavor is soft and sweet, with a note of orchid.

Huangshan Mao Feng (黄山毛峰) translates as "Downy Peaks of the Yellow Mountain". Huangshan is a mountain range in southern Anhui. Mao feng describes the leaf itself: buds in white down, with tips as sharp as mountain peaks. It is the province's best-known green tea and a model of hong qing. The leaf spends only a short time in the wok and is finished over a fire. Wok-fired Longjing and Bi Luo Chun smell of hot metal; Mao Feng is softer and more floral.

Huangshan and old Huizhou

The Huangshan mountains have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990, and the highest peak, Lianhua, rises to 1864 m. Tea grows below the rocky summits, on the slopes and in the valleys around them. There is mist almost every morning, the town of Tangkou gets about 2000 mm of rain a year, and the soil is acidic, on weathered rock.

These lands once formed Huizhou prefecture. Huizhou merchants carried salt and tea across China, and from the 18th century they also shipped tea abroad. The prefecture's chronicle traces local tea back to the Jiayou years of the Song dynasty (1056–1063) and places its heyday in the Longqing years of the Ming (1567–1572)¹.

Under the standard, tea from the whole of Huangshan prefecture may be called Huangshan Mao Feng: the Tunxi, Huangshan and Huizhou districts and the counties of Shexian, Xiuning, Yixian and Qimen. It is a large industry. In 2022 the prefecture harvested 45,000 tonnes of tea². Within the prefecture the most prized are small zones right by the mountains, above all Fuxi township and the town of Tangkou at the southern entrance to the reserve. The bushes there are mostly local and seed-grown.

Xie Zheng'an and 1875

Mao Feng is younger than Longjing and Bi Luo Chun. It is credited to Xie Zheng'an, a native of Caoxi village in Shexian county, now part of Fuxi township. He was born in 1838 into a tea family and ran a tea shop called Xie Yuda. Around 1875, in the first years of the Guangxu reign, he began picking a bud with one leaf on the high slopes, processing it in a new way and taking it to Shanghai. The downy tea with sharp bud tips came to be called mao feng, and, after its home, Huangshan Mao Feng.

In Anhui his method is retold in four short phrases: fire in the wok, roll lightly, dry the damp leaf, cover with a round sieve and finish drying. In 2008 the technique was added to China's national list of intangible cultural heritage. In 2022 it became part of the nomination for traditional Chinese tea processing, which UNESCO inscribed on its list.

Wok, basket, fire

The fresh leaf is spread thin and left to wither for several hours, then fixed in a deep wok about 50 cm across. With one hand the master quickly tosses the leaf and scatters it over the walls so it heats evenly, and scoops out every last leaf, since anything left behind will scorch. The heat is high at first, then lowered.

Next comes the step that sets Mao Feng apart from its neighbors. The top grade is barely rolled: the leaf is squeezed by hand a few times right in the wok, and that is all. Plainer leaf is rolled lightly between the palms for a minute or two after the wok. The bud stays whole, and the down stays on.

Drying takes two stages. First the leaf goes into bamboo baskets set over braziers and is dried quickly on high heat. Each wok serves four baskets, and the heat drops from the first basket to the last. Then several batches are combined and slowly finished at 60 °C under a round bamboo sieve. While still hot, the finished tea goes into tin canisters, which are then sealed.

In wok-fired tea the aroma comes from the heat of the metal; in hong qing it comes from slow drying. That is why Mao Feng lacks Longjing's toasty note. Its liquor smells of orchid and fresh chestnut, and it tastes sweet.

Sparrow's tongue and fish leaf

Top-grade leaf is straight, slightly curved, and shaped like a sparrow's tongue. Its color is ivory with a hint of green, and the buds are downy. At the base of many shoots sits a small yellow leaf, yu ye. In Anhui it is called the "golden flake" and is read as a sign of early spring picking. Mao Feng makers prize it, while sorters of Bi Luo Chun pick it out.

There are six grades: three tiers of top grade and three ordinary ones. Top grade is picked around Qingming (April 4–5), a bud with a barely opened leaf. Ordinary grades come closer to Guyu, around April 20, with one or two leaves or more. Their leaf is larger with less down, and the flavor is plainer and stronger.

The liquor is clear, pale yellow with a green tint. Steam rises over the hot glass, and descriptions of this tea call it "mist over the peak". The taste is soft and sweet, almost without bitterness, with a light coolness in the finish.

Tea from neighboring provinces also turns up under the name. It gives itself away with an even, bright green color, bare buds without the fish leaf, and a price too low for an early picking.

How to brew

People often brew Mao Feng in a glass or a white porcelain cup: 2–3 g per glass, water at 80 °C, two or three top-ups. The leaf is light and loose, and if you drop it onto water it floats for a long time. So pour in a third of the water first, add the tea, and top up once the leaf is wet. Dense Bi Luo Chun, by contrast, is scattered onto a full glass.

In a gaiwan, short infusions show more clearly how the orchid gives way to sweetness.

Use soft water: in hard water the orchid is the first thing to go.

Qimen county, in the same prefecture, makes the black tea Qimen (Keemun), called hong cha, "red tea", in China. The mountains are the same, but the leaf is fully oxidized. And in western Anhui, in the Dabie mountains, they pick the yellow tea Huo Shan Huang Ya.