Xiaguan Tuocha making technique
Xiaguan Tuocha is a compressed tea with a long history. It is named "Xiaguan Tuocha" because it was created in Xiaguan, Dali City, Yunnan Province. Xiaguan Tuocha is a very typical traditional skill created by the Bai people. It evolved from the "Tuancha" in the Ming Dynasty. It uses Yunnan large-leaf sun-dried green tea as the basic raw material. It is made through more than ten processes such as blending, screening, picking, semi-finished product blending, weighing, steaming, pressing, drying, and packaging. Most of them are manual operations and contain rich technical knowledge with regional characteristics. Xiaguan, Yunnan is located in Dali City, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture. The air in the entire Yunnan region is humid, the four seasons are mild, and the sunshine time is long, which is suitable for tea growth. Tuocha has a long history. In the book "Yunnan Lue" written by Xie Zhaoji in the Ming Dynasty, there is a record that "all the tea used by scholars and common people is Pu'er tea, which is steamed and rolled into a ball", which is an early form of Tuocha. In 1902, Yongchangxiang, a Bai ethnic group merchant from Xizhou, Dali, opened the first tea refining and processing factory in Xiaguan, processing compressed tea and cake tea, marking the birth of Tuo tea craft. Tuo tea production is a special skill. For more than a hundred years, the products produced by the Bai people with this skill have been continuously transported to northwest Yunnan, Tibet and Sichuan through the famous "Ancient Tea Horse Road", meeting the living needs of people of all ethnic groups, especially the Tibetan compatriots, and have played a very important role in the friendly exchanges of all ethnic groups for more than a hundred years. (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.) (No pictures yet, welcome to provide.)