Harvest Date: Late April
Harvest Location: Huangshan, Anhui
Cultivar: Shi Da Ye
Elevation: 660m 
 
Tai Ping Hou Kui is among China’s most celebrated historic green teas, produced in the mountains of Huangshan (historically Taiping County) in Anhui Province.
 
What makes this tea extraordinary is its material. Rather than tiny buds, Tai Ping Hou Kui is crafted from long spring shoots plucked as one bud with two leaves (两刀一枪). These shoots are carefully flattened between bamboo screens during processing, creating the tea’s iconic long, blade-like leaves with visible venation and remarkable elegance in the cup.
 
The tea’s modern form dates to the early 1900s in the villages of Hou Keng and Hou Gang, where local producers refined a distinctive style to meet growing demand from eastern Chinese cities. Historical accounts credit a tea maker named Wang Kui Cheng (王魁成) with standardizing the processing method and producing an early style known as Kui Jian (魁尖). The character 魁 (Kui) means “foremost” or “champion,” and appears both in his name and the tea’s eventual title.
 
As production centered around Hou Keng (“Monkey Hollow”) and Hou Gang (“Monkey Hill”), the tea became known as Tai Ping Hou Kui—linking place and producer. Despite enduring folklore, the name does not come from monkeys harvesting the leaves.
 
Grown at elevations around 600–800 meters in cool, misty mountain air, Tai Ping Hou Kui is known for its orchid fragrance, mellow sweetness, and unusually spacious, elegant leaf structure that unfurls dramatically when brewed.
 
A tea defined not by delicacy of bud, but by the grace and power of the mature spring leaf.