The Modern Invention of Big Red Robe Tea: History, Story, and Performance

In north Fujian, the local government commissioned filmmaker Zhang Yimou's production team to promote the Wuyi Mountain scenic area, a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Their team created an outdoor extravaganza, Impression Dahongpao, that celebrates one of Wuyi Mountain's rock oolong teas, Big Red Robe [Dahongpao].  Before 2005, Big Red Robe was a rare tea produced from the so-called mother trees, used as state gifts and auctioned by the government for high prices.  Leaves from these trees are no longer harvested, but scientists used the method of asexual reproduction to reproduce the mother trees, and in 1985 started to sell tea made from the new plants as Big Red Robe tea. 

Before the communist revolution, the Big Red Robe mother trees were the property of the Tianxin Yongle Chan Temple (est. 874 C.E.). According to a much-repeated story, in 1385, a scholar on his way to take the imperial examination fell ill near the temple, and monks helped restore his health by giving him this tea. After he passed the imperial exams with excellent results, he returned to thank them, but they instructed him to thank the tea trees instead. He expressed his gratitude by offering the trees a gift of red robes.  Today the monks at the Tianxin temple package their premium teas with an image of the red robe of a Buddhist monk.  In Impression Dahongbao, a similar story is told, but compassionate villagers rather than monks help the travelling scholar. The performance displays not Buddhist robes, but beautiful women dancing in unison on a teahouse balcony wearing traditionally styled red silk robes.    

Museum exhibits and tea merchants sometimes display calligraphic art describing tea as China's national drink, and the Chinese government promotes an appreciation of tea arts in the curriculum of Confucius Institutes worldwide. But in contrast with these secular narratives, in the tea growing areas of Southeast China, local museum exhibits, public events, and publications often offer a competing narrative that affirms tea's deep roots in local religious culture, including Chan [Zen] Buddhist monasteries like the Tianxian Yongle Chan Temple. Meanwhile, Big Red Robe tea's modern history and extraordinary value rests on improbable claim that the so-called mother trees are over 600 years old, this despite the fact that the monks reported in the 1950s that the mother trees had died after a monk administered too much fertilizer.   

Further questions may be directed to: Jean.debernardi@ualberta.ca