What Is Guangdong Tea? Chaozhou, Phoenix Mountain, and Gongfu Tea

Guangdong Province is a huge market where large quantities of Pu-erh tea are sold and consumed. Looking at the teas produced in Guangdong itself, there are oolong, black, and green teas, and by far the most famous of them is Phoenix Dan Cong Oolong, made in Fenghuang Town in Chaozhou.

Phoenix Dan Cong is one of China's three great oolong teas, along with Anxi oolong and Wuyi oolong. Beyond its remarkable aroma, tea made from old trees has a long lingering finish and a natural sweetness, and it has many devoted fans.

We have visited the region regularly since 2010 and source directly from the producers.

Chaozhou and Phoenix Mountain

Chaozhou is a city in Guangdong, about an hour's drive from the nearest airport, Chaoshan. Fenghuang Town, where the tea is grown, is a mountain village about an hour's drive from Chaozhou, and it takes another hour by car to get near the top of Phoenix Mountain.

The name "Phoenix Mountain" might make you picture a single large mountain. In fact, it is a range of connected peaks. Every one of them is a rugged, rocky mountain with huge granite outcrops, and the tea trees are planted in the gaps between the rocks. The rocky soil is rich in minerals, but it is a hard place for tea trees to grow.

On Phoenix Mountain, tea trees were planted first on the higher ground during the Song dynasty. As a result, the old trees are concentrated at around 1,000 to 1,200 meters, and there are almost none at lower elevations. Wudong Mountain, just under 1,400 meters high, has red soil well suited to tea and is the most sought-after area for Phoenix Dan Cong.

A Tea the Locals Drink Every Day

What makes Phoenix Dan Cong stand out is that 70 to 80% of all production is consumed in just two cities, Chaozhou and Shantou. Phoenix Dan Cong includes "single tree" tea, made only from leaves plucked from one tree, which is especially high in quality, and most of that is drunk in the Chaoshan area too. Walk around Chaozhou and you see people brewing Phoenix Dan Cong everywhere. I think the fact that the tea is so widely drunk by the people who make it is itself proof of its quality.

In Chaozhou, the usual way is gongfu style: about 5 g of leaves in a 50 to 100 ml gaiwan, brewed with boiling water at a quick pace for many infusions. You can watch a Fenghuang producer brew it in our video, "The Gungfu Brewing Method of Phoenix Oolong by the Local Tea Expert".

Chaozhou is known for its red clay (zhuni) pottery, so people often assume the locals brew Phoenix Dan Cong in zhuni teapots. However, when you actually visit, zhuni production turns out to be very small and hardly used locally. Ordinary people and tea professionals alike almost all use porcelain gaiwans.

The People and Food of Chaozhou

In China, Chaozhou people are known as hard workers with a craftsman's spirit. The streets are lined with specialty shops that each sell a single kind of item, and people dig deep into their own trade. The food is the same. Chaozhou cooking looks and smells simple, but the soups, made by simmering pork trotters and chicken bones for hours, surprise you with their depth from the first sip.

This habit of valuing substance over appearance shows in Phoenix Dan Cong as well. The producers keep farming naturally even though it lowers their yield, and they have held on for generations to charcoal roasting at low temperatures over a long time, a method that takes a great deal of work.

Chaozhou Food Culture in Southeast Asia

Hawker food in Malaysia and Singapore is often said to have its roots in the Minnan region of Fujian. However, if you actually go to Xiamen or Anxi, you hardly see any street food culture. In Chaozhou and Shantou, on the other hand, dishes familiar across Southeast Asia, such as char kway teow, kway teow soup, and chee cheong fun, are sold under the same names. For these reasons, Chaoshan food culture is one of the main roots of Southeast Asian street food.

Malaysia and Thailand have many people of Teochew descent, and many of the most successful Chinese in Southeast Asia come from Chaozhou.

How We Source

We have visited Chaozhou regularly since 2010, staying on site and buying directly from producers. Our current producer owns their own tea gardens and handles everything from processing to charcoal roasting, which is rare in this area. In 2024, this producer acquired a new garden full of Lao Cong (old tea trees) at 1,200 meters in Guizhuhu, one of the finest areas on Wudong Mountain.

Single tree tea made from trees several hundred years old varies in aroma and flavor from tree to tree, and its quality also depends on how it is processed. On site, we confirm the origin of each tea with the producer and taste each one side by side before we buy. Being able to check the quality of each tree for ourselves, instead of relying on the name "single tree," is why we choose in person.

For the aroma types of Phoenix Dan Cong, what Dan Cong and Lao Cong mean, and how it is made and brewed, see "What Is Phoenix Dan Cong?"