Tea: The East is Red
Type: Dongfang Hong Dancong Oolong （东方红单丛乌龙)
Style: Classic Dancong
Roast: Heavy
Harvest: Spring 2026
Region: Wudong Village, Phoenix Mountains, Chaozhou
Producers: Wen Zitong
Tasting Notes: Sage, Butter, Honey, Rock Salt, Pine Sap
The East is Red is an interesting Dancong Oolong varietal. Originally cultivated during the Maoist Era, the name itself comes from a famous revolutionary song. While this tea is often grown and sold as a gift tea, the quality of this less-common varietal is always stunning for us. On Wudong Mountain, this cultivar is one of young maker Wen Zitong's favorites, when visiting neighbors in the village, he would always request to try their East is Red, this tea has a lot of local fame and appreciation.
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One of the most often requested dancong oolongs is this East is Red, or Dong Fang Hong. Typically represented as a more traditionally roasted dancong, there are many good examples of this cultivar on the market, so there is little surprise that it has such a cult following.
The leaves in the warmed gaiwan reveal a slight note of sage, fresh spices beneath the buttery toasted notes of the roast. As this cultivar does well when roasted in the traditional fashion, it has a lot more flame than some of the other dancong oolong teas this season. The resultant tea likely needs to rest a few more months before reaching optimal drinking status, but it is currently a mix of rich vegetation of the old bush leaves and a thick coating of buttery roast on top.
When infused with water, the leaves show their old bush pedigree, we get notes of cedar, sage, and even something spicy like ginger in the fragrance of the wet leaves. The brew itself starts off a little reddish, but quickly brews into a rich gold hue. On the tongue, this cultivar is always mineral sweet, with rock sugar notes and a slight saline property that keeps us salivating between sips. For teas like this, we enjoy drinking the rinse, or even pouring it into a separate cup to drink cold at the end of the session.
The flavors in the tea soup are very pronounced, beyond the mineral body, we get notes of rose hips, that ginger spice, and even some gardenia on the tongue. The old-bush nature of this tea is clearly expressed in the tea soup, as it is both mellow and sweet without showing too many touch edges or unchecked bitterness. This is a tea that transfers a majority of the fragrances and flavors directly into the tea soup, which is rich and engaging all the way through the session.
The East is Red is a very popular revolutionary song from Maoist China, and this tea is an homage to that tune and its time.
During the Maoist Era, all the villages in the present day Phoenix Township of Eastern Guangdong were organized into a single massive commune － for two decades this commune produced virtually all of China's Dancong Tea. Although the commune has been defunct now for almost forty years and many of the innovations of that time (including dual-hand picking) have largely disappeared, one tea variety has stood the test of time: "Dongfanghong" AKA the East is Red. This tea was first developed and produced commercially during the height of the Cultural Revolution and has remained in production ever since, though grown now on a relatively small scale.
Check out our Glossary of Dancong Oolong Terms to understand this info more!
