TeaHQ

Tunxi

The river town at the centre of old Huizhou in southern Anhui, and the assembly point for Tunlü — the refined green tea that left China in enormous quantity for North Africa and Europe. Tunxi was a sorting, refining and grading centre rather than a garden district: leaf came in from the surrounding counties, was re-fired, screened by size and blended to a buyer’s specification, and left downriver. The distinction between where tea grows and where it is finished is one the export trade made constantly, and this is the clearest Chinese example of the second kind of place.

屯溪China100–700 metresAlso called HuizhouAlso called Twankay

Elevation

Recorded at 100–700 metres.

How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. Tunxi’s role was commercial. The leaf it graded came from a catchment across southern Anhui and north-eastern Jiangxi at a range of elevations.

When it is picked

A refining calendar following the surrounding counties' spring, not a picking one. Leaf arrives from the Huizhou hills after primary manufacture and is re-fired, screened by size and blended to a buyer's specification, so the town's working year begins where a garden's premium weeks end and runs on well past them. The surrounding hills pick on the ordinary Anhui spring pattern.

How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. Tunxi is an assembly and refining centre rather than a garden district, which its own description says. The calendar recorded is the one that governs the place.

How the name is written

Also transliterated as tun xi, tunxi. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.

Other growing regions in China

The neighbouring districts are the useful comparison: they share a country, a grading convention and often a cultivar, so what differs between them is closer to terroir than anything a cross-border comparison can isolate.

Sources

  • TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ

This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No external document stands behind the elevation band, the climate note or the character described above, which is why each carries its confidence in the open.

How TeaHQ handles sources