Mount Emei E’rui Tea

Mount Emei E’rui Tea

　　E’rui is a famous tea from Sichuan. It is produced in Mount Emei City, within the jurisdiction of Leshan City, Sichuan Province. It is a type of green tea. Its quality characteristics include: tightly rolled and slender strips that are delicate and graceful, with fuzz forming buds like stamens, a tender green color, a noble and fresh aroma, a mellow and refreshing taste, a bright and clear soup color, and evenly tender yellowish-green leaves.

　　Mount Emei is a famous tourist destination in China and also one of the province’s major tea-producing areas. The tea plantations are mostly located at altitudes of 800–1200 meters around sites such as Wannian Temple, Qingyin Pavilion, and White Dragon Cave, all nestled among the mountains, giving the tea an inherently excellent quality. E’rui is meticulously crafted from tender buds—typically one bud with the first leaf just beginning to unfold—that are picked about ten days before the Qingming Festival.

　　E’rui is named for its tightly rolled, slender leaves with visible white fuzz, resembling flower stamens. The area around Qingyin Pavilion, White Dragon Cave, Wannian Temple, and Heishui Temple on the mountainside of Mount Emei is where E’rui tea thrives. Surrounded by mountains and shrouded in clouds year-round, the region enjoys a suitable climate, fertile soil, and is an ideal place for tea trees to grow. Villagers near Mount Emei have long had the custom of foraging for wild tea on the mountains.

　　According to the *Records of Mount Emei*: “Mount Emei abounds in medicinal herbs, and its tea is especially fine, unmatched anywhere else in the world. At the summit behind Heishui Temple grows a kind of tea that tastes bitter at first but ends sweet, not inferior to the spring-picked teas of the south.” The famous teas of Mount Emei were listed as tribute offerings over a thousand years ago. The Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi expressed his deep love for Sichuan tea in his poem *Thanking Official Li for Sending New Shu Tea*, which reads: “Old friendships extend to kin and close friends, / A portion of new tea reaches even my sickbed. / A red-sealed letter arrives with your message, / Ten green sprouts, plucked before the Fire Festival. / I add spoonfuls of water to bring it to a simmer, / Not yet stirring it with a spoon before the leaves open. / You sent it to me before anyone else— / Perhaps because you know I’m a true connoisseur of tea.” Upon receiving the pre-Qingming tea, picked one or two days before the festival and wrapped in red paper by Li, Bai Juyi was delighted. He immediately boiled water to the “fish-eye” stage and used brewing tools such as a “dagger measure” to taste the new Sichuan tea. Bai Juyi, who had considerable knowledge and a great love for tea drinking, proudly claimed, “You sent it to me before anyone else—perhaps because you know I’m a true connoisseur of tea.”

　　E’rui was recognized as a famous tea of Sichuan in the 1960s and has won multiple provincial-level awards for famous tea since the 1980s.