Why Emperors Obsessed With This One Tea for 1,000 Years

Also known in Chinese tradition: Why Chinese emperors were obsessed with Longjing tea history

On a spring morning in 1757, the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty stood on Shifeng Mountain overlooking Hangzhou’s West Lake and declared eighteen tea bushes sacred. He was not, by any measure, an easy man to impress. Qianlong had conquered the Dzungar Khanate, expanded the Chinese empire to its largest territorial extent in history, and commissioned the Siku Quanshu—the largest encyclopedia ever assembled at the time. Yet here he was, in the misty hills of Zhejiang Province, kneeling in the dirt beside a tea plant.

Those eighteen bushes are still producing leaves today. Every spring, the first harvest from what is now called the “Imperial Tea” (御茶) at Hugong Temple sells for prices that make Bordeaux grands crus look like table wine. In 2024, a single gram of pre-Qingming Shifeng Longjing from those bushes was reported to trade privately for sums exceeding RMB 10,000—more per gram than gold. The emperor’s obsession did not die with the Qing dynasty. It embedded itself so deeply in Chinese culture that Longjing, or Dragon Well tea, has become something far more than a beverage. It is a liquid monument to 1,200 years of imperial ambition, Buddhist discipline, and the quiet revolution of taste.

Before the Emperor: Tea, Monks, and the Birth of a Legend

Longjing’s story begins not with emperors but with monks. The tea-growing tradition around West Lake dates to the Southern Dynasties period (420–589 CE), when Buddhist monks at the Lingyin and Tianzhu temples planted tea seeds on the slopes of Fenghuangling. The connection between Buddhism and tea in China was never incidental. Monks used tea to stay awake during long meditation sessions, and the discipline of tea preparation became a form of moving meditation in itself. The hills around Hangzhou, with their misty microclimate, acidic soil, and south-facing slopes, turned out to be almost perfectly suited for Camellia sinensis.

By the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), the tea culture of the region was sufficiently developed to earn a mention in Lu Yu’s The Classic of Tea (茶经), the foundational text of Chinese tea scholarship, completed around 760 CE. Lu Yu, an orphan raised by monks, traveled China documenting every aspect of tea production and preparation. His description of the teas produced near West Lake established the region’s reputation among the scholarly elite. It is worth pausing on this: the reputation of Longjing tea was already being shaped by a nationally recognized authority more than 1,200 years ago. This is not a recent marketing invention. It is a pedigree measured in millennia.

The name “Longjing” itself—Dragon Well—comes from a real well on the grounds of Longjing Temple, built during the Five Dynasties period (907–960 CE). Local legend held that the well contained a sleeping dragon, and that the dragon’s breath created the mist that gave the tea its subtle flavor. The dragon has long since departed, but the name stuck, and the well became a pilgrimage site for tea connoisseurs across dynasties. By the Song dynasty (960–1279), Longjing tea was being written about in poetry. By the Ming (1368–1644), it had become one of the most celebrated teas in the empire. But it was a foreign emperor who would turn a regional specialty into a national treasure.

The Manchu Emperor Who Fell in Love with a Han Tea

Emperor Qianlong (reigned 1735–1796) was Manchu, not Han Chinese. The Qing dynasty, founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan, had conquered Ming China in 1644, and the legitimacy of Manchu rule was a constant political concern. One of the ways the Qing emperors cultivated legitimacy was through the embrace and patronage of Chinese high culture—calligraphy, poetry, painting, and tea. Qianlong was the most prolific poet in Chinese history (he wrote more than 40,000 poems, though scholars debate their quality), a passionate calligrapher, and, as it turned out, a tea obsessive of the first order.

During his six Southern Inspection Tours (南巡) between 1751 and 1784, Qianlong visited Hangzhou multiple times and made a point of personally inspecting the tea-growing regions of the West Lake area. The story of his proclamation of the eighteen Imperial Tea bushes at Shifeng is the most famous episode, but it was not an isolated gesture. Qianlong established an entire bureaucracy for the selection, preparation, and transportation of Longjing tribute tea to the Forbidden City. The tea was harvested before the Qingming Festival (early April), when the leaves were at their most tender, hand-fried in iron woks by master tea makers, packed in sealed lead canisters, and rushed to Beijing via imperial courier routes that changed horses every 40 kilometers.

The designation of Longjing as a tribute tea (贡茶) had consequences that shaped the industry for centuries. Tribute status meant that the best Longjing production was effectively nationalized: the top grades went directly to the imperial court, and only the surplus was available for private sale. This created a hierarchy of quality that persists to this day. The finest Longjing—Shifeng grade, harvested before Qingming, hand-fried by certified masters—still operates in a market where supply is artificially constrained by the same geographic and skill limitations that constrained it in Qianlong’s time. The emperor’s taste became the national standard, and the national standard has not changed in 270 years.

Qianlong was also responsible for cementing the connection between Longjing and the specific terroir of Shifeng Mountain. In his poetry—he wrote at least eight poems explicitly about Longjing tea—he described the unique qualities imparted by the Lion Peak (狮峰) soil and mist. This was not merely aesthetic appreciation. Qianlong was making a territorial claim through tea. By sanctifying a specific location as the source of the empire’s finest tea, he was weaving the landscape of southern China into the fabric of Manchu imperial identity. Every cup of Shifeng Longjing drunk in Beijing was a small act of political unification, a taste of the south consumed in the north, an empire bound together by shared appreciation for a leaf.

The Three Zones and the Billion-Dollar Leaf

The legacy of Qianlong’s tribute system lives on in the strict geographical indication (GI) protection that governs Longjing production today. Under Chinese law, only tea grown within the officially designated West Lake Longjing protection zone—divided into three concentric areas—can legally be called “West Lake Longjing” (西湖龙井).

The three zones are Shifeng (Lion Peak), the original source of the imperial tribute tea; Meijiawu (梅家坞), the largest production area, known for its consistent quality; and the broader West Lake zone, which encompasses smaller villages such as Longjing Village, Wengjiashan, and Manjuelong. Each zone produces tea with distinct flavor characteristics rooted in microterroir. Shifeng Longjing is prized for its rich, nutty flavor with a lingering sweetness—the closest living connection to the tea the emperor drank. Meijiawu is smoother, more approachable, with pronounced chestnut notes. The broader West Lake zone produces a tea that is excellent by any global standard but lacks the concentrated flavor profile of the inner zones.

The economic scale of Longjing production is staggering. According to the 2024 annual report from the Zhejiang Provincial Tea Industry Association, the total output value of West Lake Longjing exceeded RMB 6.5 billion (approximately USD 900 million) in 2024, with Shifeng-grade teas accounting for an outsized share of that value despite representing less than 5% of total production volume. The price differential between Shifeng Longjing and generic provincial Longjing is typically 10:1 or higher. A 2025 market analysis by the China Tea Marketing Association found that authentic pre-Qingming West Lake Longjing—the grade that would have been sent to the imperial court—sold at farm-gate prices averaging RMB 6,000 to RMB 12,000 per 500 grams in 2025, with top lots from heritage bushes reaching multiples of that.

The counterfeit problem, however, is enormous. China produces approximately 2 million kilograms of “Longjing” tea annually, but the officially designated West Lake Longjing production zone produces only about 300,000 kilograms. The remaining 85% of what is sold as Longjing is either Zhejiang Province Longjing (grown outside the West Lake zone but within Zhejiang) or, in an unknown but significant percentage, tea from other provinces passed off as Longjing. The GI system is only as strong as its enforcement, and enforcement remains inconsistent despite the introduction of QR-code traceability tags for authentic West Lake Longjing in 2021.

The UNESCO Moment and the New Global Market

On November 29, 2022, “Traditional tea processing techniques and associated social practices in China” was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Longjing’s hand-frying technique—shaqing (杀青), the enzyme-inactivating step performed in iron woks at temperatures exceeding 250°C—was explicitly included among the 44 nationally recognized intangible cultural heritage items that formed the application. The UNESCO designation was not merely ceremonial. It signaled to global consumers that Chinese tea processing is a cultural achievement deserving of the same recognition as French gastronomy or Japanese washoku.

The impact on international demand has been measurable. Chinese customs data for 2024 shows green tea exports—predominantly premium grades including Longjing—grew 18% by value year-over-year, despite a 3% decline in export volume, indicating a structural shift toward higher-value shipments. The United States, United Kingdom, and Germany all recorded double-digit increases in imports of Chinese premium green tea in 2024. Specialty tea retailers in London and New York report that Longjing is now their single best-selling Chinese green tea by revenue, a position it did not hold before 2020.

The story-driven marketing angle is critical here. Western consumers are not simply buying a tea. They are buying the Qianlong emperor’s obsession, the 1,200-year history, the hand-frying technique performed at 250°C by certified intangible cultural heritage inheritors. The narrative sells the tea at a price point that commodity green tea cannot reach. A 2024 case study published in the Journal of Cultural Marketing analyzed the marketing strategies of five premium Longjing brands targeting international markets and found that the most successful brands—those achieving per-gram prices above USD 3 in Western retail—all centered their positioning on the Qianlong story and the UNESCO heritage designation. The emperor’s 18th-century enthusiasm is generating 21st-century revenue.

Why the Emperor Was Right

There is a temptation in the West to dismiss the Qianlong-Longjing story as marketing mythology—a charming but essentially fabricated origin story designed to sell expensive tea to tourists. This reading misses the deeper truth. Qianlong did not invent Longjing’s reputation. He recognized a quality that had already been cultivated by Buddhist monks for centuries and elevated it to national prominence through imperial patronage. The tea was genuinely exceptional before he arrived. He simply gave it a platform.

The hand-frying technique that UNESCO recognized is not a gimmick. It requires skills that take a minimum of three to five years of full-time practice to develop. Master tea makers—those officially recognized as intangible cultural heritage inheritors—can detect variations of 5°C in wok temperature by the feel of the leaves against their bare hands. They adjust pressure, speed, and angle continuously through the 15-to-20-minute frying process, responding to the changing moisture content of leaves that were picked hours earlier. Every batch is slightly different, and the master’s judgment determines whether a RMB 500-grade tea becomes a RMB 5,000-grade tea.

This is why the emperor’s obsession still matters. In an era of mass production, algorithm-driven taste, and endless choice, Longjing represents a countercurrent: a product whose quality is deliberately constrained by geography, season, and human skill. You cannot factory-automate the hand-frying technique. You cannot scale up Shifeng Mountain. You cannot make more pre-Qingming harvests by adding capital. The supply is what it is, and the demand is growing, because a growing number of consumers are willing to pay for the thing that cannot be reproduced.

Qianlong recognized this in 1757 when he knelt beside those eighteen bushes. He understood that the rarest things are not rare because they are artificially scarce. They are rare because the conditions required to produce them—the right altitude, the right soil, the right mist, the right hands at the right moment—cannot be replicated on command. The emperor drank a tea that was already a thousand years in the making, and he had the good sense to tell the world about it. That story, transmitted across eighteen generations, is still what makes a cup of genuine Longjing worth more than its weight in gold.

Further Reading

1. UNESCO. “Traditional Tea Processing Techniques and Associated Social Practices in China.” Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, inscribed November 29, 2022. ich.unesco.org/en/RL/traditional-tea-processing-techniques-and-associated-social-practices-in-china-01884.

2. Zhejiang Provincial Tea Industry Association. “West Lake Longjing Industry Development Report 2024.” Hangzhou, 2025.

3. Zheng, S. and Liu, M. “Heritage Branding and Cultural Narrative in Premium Chinese Tea Marketing.” Journal of Cultural Marketing, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2024, pp. 88-106.

4. Mair, V. and Hoh, E. The True History of Tea. Thames & Hudson, 2009. Chapters 7-9 on Qing dynasty tea culture and the tribute system.

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