Tea: The East is Red
Type: Dongfang Hong Dancong Oolong （东方红单丛乌龙)
Style: Classic Dancong
Roast: Heavy
Harvest: Spring 2025
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 most recent roast. Due to the seemingly endless typhoons plaguing the southern coast of China this year, Wen Zitong took his time giving these teas their final roasts to ensure no enduring moisture in the leaves. The tea I tasted after its second roast and before the final roast was a symphony of vegetation, rock minerals, and buttery sweetness, however, it washy yet the traditionally roasted tea we would expect from a Dong Fang Hong.
When infused with water, the leaves shrug off their recent roast (we are drinking this tea just weeks after the final roast, and the leaves have not yet rested properly, in a few months time, the roast and the leaves will have emulsified into one uniform flavor). The final roasting has given this tea a very full mouthfeel with an oily nature that coats the tongue and throat. After a few infusions, the roast gives way to the symphony of flavors we remember from after the second roast. 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.
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