China · Food Processing / Tea Making
中国传统制茶技艺 (Zhōngguó chuántǒng zhì chá jìyì)
The manual processing of tea leaves into China's six great tea categories — green, yellow, dark, white, oolong, and black — through a shared vocabulary of core techniques including shaqing (enzyme inactivation), weidiao (withering), zuoqing (leaf shaking and cooling), fajiao (oxidation or fermentation), menhuang (yellowing), wodui (piling), and yinzhi (scenting), applied in differing combinations and sequences across more than 2,000 distinct tea products; the making of Tieguanyin, a premium Fujian oolong, exemplifies the craft's precision, requiring ten distinct steps from outdoor withering through final roasting, while black tea's own invention is traced to a specific documented accident in the late Ming dynasty, when delayed processing at a Wuyishan factory left tea leaves fully oxidized, and the producer salvaged the batch by smoke-drying it over pine-branch fires.
Risk level: Vulnerable · UNESCO Representative List (2022) — Traditional Chinese Tea Processing Techniques
The hand-engraving and ink-printing of Buddhist scriptures onto knot-free pear wood blocks, practiced at the Jinling Sutra Printing House in Nanjing (historically called Jinling) since Buddhist revivalist Yang Renshan founded it in 1866 —…
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