Ms. Zhou & Mr. Liu

Ms. Zhou and Mr. Liu work on the outer edge of Wuyi.

Ms. Zhou is from Huangcun. Her uncle founded one of the early private yancha factories during the transition of the 1980s. Her cousin, You Yuqiong, is a National-level Intangible Cultural Heritage inheritor of the Wuyi yancha (Da Hong Pao) making technique—one of the first ten recognized in 2006, and the only woman among them.

She grew up between the mountains and the factory. In her twenties, she was sent to Guangzhou to manage the Yongsheng Yancha Factory shop in Fangcun, where the teas arrived directly from production.

Later, with Liu Mingdong, she opened a shop of their own. The teas came from the family factory, and from plots scattered across the mountains—one lot after another, each with its own character.

In time, they returned to Wuyi.

Their garden lies just beyond the boundary of the protected area. The land had never been worked. They cleared it and planted along the slopes. Shui xian and rou gui remain at the core, with other cultivars set alongside them.

Mr. Liu is from Shuinan village, on the same outer edge of Wuyi. On his mother’s side, his family comes from Jianyang, where white tea has long been made from xiao bai cha and shui xian.

After the planting, he worked alongside Ms. Zhou’s family under the guidance of her brother, Mr. Zhou Zeyou. The work took shape year by year. The handling grew more precise. The roasting followed, finding its rhythm.

The garden is tended entirely by hand, without chemical fertilizers or herbicides. Each year, the teas are tested against EU standards.

Zhou Zeyou is from Wuyi.

He is recognized as a Chinese Tea Master, a National First-Class Tea Evaluator and Processing Technician, and a Senior Tea Engineer. He is also listed in the Wuyishan Tea Expert Talent Pool.

He entered the Yongsheng Yancha Factory in 1993 and remained there until 2009. In his early years, he worked under You Yuqiong, learning within a lineage where repetition shaped understanding.

The work returned, day after day, to the same gestures. Each step repeated. Over time, roasting temperature, and the weight and timing of zuo qing—the controlled oxidation—shifted from something followed to something held instinctively in the hand.

The mountain plots in Huangcun come from his family. There are older bushes, later plantings, and a few lao cong trees. Different cultivars are worked together, batch by batch. The leaf is taken as it comes; the roasting is decided only once it begins to खुल, to reveal itself.

In recent years, he has taken on apprentices. Some bring their own zheng yan plots, from the core rock area. During the season, they ask him to finish their batches. He moves from mountain to mountain, completing one lot, then another.

He is present each spring at the Wuyishan evaluations, and at private competitions during the Cross-Strait Tea Expo, where he works on standard sample replication and technical assessment.