[2026 Pre-Sale 10%] Handmade Tai Ping Hou Kui Green Tea

2026 First Flush Batch

Handmade Tai Ping Hou Kui【Monkey King】Green Tea

Largest sized tea leaves among all kinds of green teas

Tai Ping Hou Kui, translated as Tai Ping Monkey King, is one of the 10 most famous Chinese Tea, with the longest and largest sized tea leaves among all kinds of green teas. Its name “Tai Ping 太平” refers to its place of origin – Tai Ping country, which is the old name of Huang Shan, aka Yellow Mountain in Anhui, a famous and excellent tea production area with a long history of tea production. “Hou Kui 猴魁” means “Monkey King”, as there is an old legend saying the tea is picked by Monkey in the “Monkey Pit”.

This year’s selection: Core production area – Hou Keng Village

This year, we are excited to present a first-flush batch of Tai Ping Hou Kui from its core production area—Hou Keng (猴坑 Monkey Pit) in Huang Shan, Anhui Province, China. Hou Keng Village is widely regarded as the premier production area for Tai Ping Hou Kui. The tea grown here is particularly rich in amino acids, due to the area’s high elevation.

Tea from Hou Keng is celebrated for its unique and layered flavor profile known as “Monkey Rhyme” (Hou Yun). This exceptional quality boasts a comforting mouthfeel, an enchanting orchid fragrance, and a sweet aftertaste that lingers in both the mouth and throat. Such a distinctive experience is characteristic of only the finest Tai Ping Hou Kui teas.

Appearance and Tasting Profile

The dry leaves feature fat tea buds covered with apparent white pekoe, which significantly enhances its umami and sweetness. The tea offers a distinctive and lingering orchid fragrance accompanied by bean and nutty notes, followed by a long-lasting aftertaste. Crafted from mature leaves, this tea is relatively robust in flavor and lighter in grassiness compared to other green teas. It can be re-steeped multiple times, retaining its rich flavor with each infusion.

Why do Tai Ping Hou Kui have huge leaves?

It is difficult not to be attracted by its appearance when you first see Taiping Hou Kui. The tea leaves is very long, with 5-7cm long. It is pressed flat and straight, and sharp at two ends. The size of Tai Ping Hou Kui is greatly related to its varietal and plucking methods. The tea tree – Shi Da Cha big leaf varietal has a unique characteristics of big leaves and slow growth. Its tea leaves are fat and large, it will not lose its freshness and tenderness even when it grows to two to three leaves. As the tea is made of mature leaves instead of young buds and leaves, and its plucking standard is one buds and 2-3 leaves, it is usually being harvested in late spring – after middle of April and the harvest period only last within 15-20 days. At that time, the mature leaves will be big enough to make the best quality of Tai Ping Hou Kui.

What is the making process of Tai Ping Hou Kui?

The hand-making process is very complex and time-consuming, after plucking the tea buds with 3-4 leaves, tea maker will need to extract only one bud with 2 leaves, and discard the extra leaves, leaving the stem with around 1cm long; It was then being lightly withered for losing some water content, and then being wok-fired for green-killing. After the step of kill-green, each tea leaves is then being evenly placed one by one on a wooden squared net grid, and being hand-pressed on the grid for shaping. The pressed tea leaves are then being baked several times.

What is the differences between Handmade and Machine-made Tai Ping Hou Kui?

The genuine handmade Hou Kui will have some remarkable grid pattern visible on the tea leaves, whereas the hou Kui made and pressed by machine will not have those grid pattern and is relatively thinner and lighter.

How to brew Tai Ping Hou Kui?

For brewing the Tea, we recommend to use a tall glass, every tea leaves will float vertically.

Glass Style: prepare a tall glass, pre-warm the glass by rinsing it, fill your glass with 80-85°c water, add tea leaves (3g), let it rest for 1 minute, enjoy (Don’t drink the whole glass, left 1/3 of Tea liquor in the glass for resteeping, add 30’s each time)

Authentication sticker

To further consolidate and enhance the quality of Taiping Houkui tea, the geographic authentication sticker for Taiping Houkui has officially been fully implemented. In Huangshan District, the certification system for Taiping Houkui geographical indication protection tea products has officially started operation in seven village groups: Hou Cun, Hou Keng, Yan Jia, Chen Jia Wu, Shi He Keng, Lao Jiu and Shan Xia.

Consumers purchasing Taiping Houkui produced by these seven village groups can recognize it by the dedicated Taiping Houkui mark. Authentication sticker attached for package over 125g only. Please note that the sticker system may vary due to local governance changes.

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Harvest Date: Mid-April to Late April 2026

Weight per pack: 50g/ 125g/ 250g/ 500g (Authentication sticker attached for package over 125g only)

Tea Farm Location: Hou Keng Village, Huang Shan, Anhui, China

Varietal: Shi Da Cha Big Leaf Varietal

Tasting Notes: refreshing, orchid fragrance, floral notes, nutty notes, lingering sweetness

Dry Leaves Appearance: large, long, flat, green with some pekoe in between

Tea Liquor Colour: bright and clear light yellow-green

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Pre-order terms and conditions:

1. Availability:
Pre-ordered items are sold on a first come, first served basis.

2. Delivery:
We aim to ship pre-ordered products within 7 days of receiving the tea.

We do our best to meet the estimated delivery date (the estimated delivery date of the product within the product description on our website). This date cannot be guaranteed due to potential delays on harvest date, however we do our best to estimate this date as accurately as possible.

Your order will be sent when all the goods are in stock. If there are ‘in-stock’ items on your order they will be put to one side and shipped at the same time as your pre-ordered item; we do not do partial shipments.

3. Payment:
Payment is taken and processed at the time your order is placed.
If for any reason we cannot fill your order, a full refund will be issued.

4. Cancellations:
We will accept cancellations of pre-ordered items before the order has shipped, however if this becomes a regular occurrence we reserve the right to refuse further orders.

**Your pre-order purchase is also subject to our General Terms and Conditions.