Wuyi Mountains

Wuyi is a place where the Danxia landform and tea grew up together, inscribed as a World Cultural and Natural Heritage site in 1999. Thirty-six peaks flank a single stream, the Nine-Bend, and the mountains are not especially high — yet every peak has a name and every peak has tea. Plant the same seedlings on a different ridge and the aroma takes on a different character; that is where the phrase "rock-bone fragrance" comes from. The few Da Hong Pao mother trees on the cliff at Jiulongke are the spiritual landmark of the whole rock-tea district. Walk north to Tongmu Pass and you meet another lineage altogether, for the world's first black tea, Lapsang Souchong, was born deep in these mountains. April and May are the rock-tea picking season; when the osmanthus opens in September and October, the village workshops keep their fires burning around the clock.

We take you down the Nine-Bend Stream on a bamboo raft, naming the thirty-six peaks one by one as you look up; then up Tianyou Peak to wait for a sea of cloud; then to a seat below Matou Rock to keep a pot of Rougui warm until it goes cold. In the end, the subtleties of rock tea only make sense once you have walked the mountain.

With two days, give one to the Nine-Bend Stream and Tianyou Peak, and one to the workshops and the tea table. Tianyou Peak has a great many steps, but forty unhurried minutes will get you up — there is no need to rush. In the April picking season, mountain guesthouses are the tightest, so book a month ahead. Come in winter and there is no tea to pick, but there are fewer people and a better chance of the cloud sea.