Round the Bend

July 1, 2019

Mount Wuyi, Fujian Province, China -- The Nine Bend River (Jiuqu Xi) is a masterpiece one hundred million years in the making. It meanders 60 kilometers amid karst rock peaks that rose eons past, eroded into winding valleys formed by the aqua-colored stream that cuts through China’s oolong tea capital - Mount Wuyi in the north-east part of the Fujian Province. Mount Wuyi’s most famous oolo

Read this article for free!

Or, subscribe for full access.
Already a subscriber? Login here

Jaq James

Jaq is an Australian who became a Chinese tea enthusiast after moving to Mount Wuyi, Fujian, in 2016. She was kindly taken under the wings of several lecturers of Wuyi University’s School of Tea Science for private tutorage. She has since travelled to different tea-producing provinces across China to learn more about Chinese tea culture. In 2018 she published a novella, called The Found One, about Mount Wuyi’s tea culture. She hopes to introduce many fellow Australians to the benefits of drinking fine teas through The Artisan Tea Hut.

← Previous Post

Tasting Notes: Yellow Goddess of Mercy Oolong Tea

Kakuzo Okakura and the Cup of Humanity

3 Comments

Bill Ellis
on July 4, 2019 at 8:21 am •Reply

Hi Jaq:
It might be useful to readers to explain that karst is limestone, easily etched by water, especially if acid is present, such as from decaying vegetation or acid rain.
The Jade Maiden Peak looks to me like a basalt pluton, not karst. Such rock towers, like Devil’s Postpile in the US, are much harder than karst limestone, so they tend to remain after everything else has been eroded away. The “posts” tend to look hexagonal because of the way basalt cools and crystalizes.
Bill, tea lover
- Jaq James
  on July 8, 2019 at 12:03 am •Reply
  
  Hi Bill. Thanks for your comment. I’ve scoured the internet in both English and Chinese, but unfortunately haven’t been able to find a source explaining the composition of the peak. So I’ve simply deleted the word ‘karst’.
YU XUAN HE
on February 25, 2020 at 3:19 am •Reply

Hi Bill,

I read the introduction of Mt. Wuyi in Baidu in simplified Chinese, and found that the scenery along the nine bend river is actually not karst landscape, but they do have some karst scenery nearby.