Feng Huang Lao Cong Ya Shi Xiang 鴨屎香 from Mt. Wudong, a farmed clone of very old ‘duck shit’ bushes from Mt. Wudong.

Years ago, I was browsing the internet for new teas to try and stumbled down a rabbit hole of a type called Phoenix Oolongs (Feng Huang Dan Cong). There were so many varieties to choose from that I decided to pick based on the name: ‘fragrance of duck shit’ or ‘ya shi xiang’ — little did I know that particular tea would change my life so drastically.

There are at least 23 ‘famous’ types of ‘Feng Huang Dan Cong’ (herein after referred to as ‘Phoenix Oolongs’). Famous is a bit subjective because some are incredulously more popular than others. The word ‘Phoenix’ in its name implies that the tea is made in the area of the ‘Phoenix Mountains’ in the northern part of Chaozhou city (潮州市) in Eastern Guangdong Province.

‘Dan Cong’ should imply that the finished tea is the product of a single isolated tea bush, not a blend of different bushes, but this has changed with modern agricultural practices. As it has been taught to me, the area has received so much fame for their high quality tea that the producers in the area just slap the word ‘Dan Cong’ on everything they can because it would be hard to sell otherwise. It’s also worth mentioning that I wrote ‘bush’ just now, most of the time the good ‘Dan Congs’ are more like tree.

Long ago all of these phoenix tea plants grew from seeds scattered in the area by wandering monks and travellers from the Wuyi mountains to the East. Shui Xian was the name of the bush which these seeds originated from and Shui Xian is still popular today in the Wuyi mountains. Unpredictable genetic mutations can occur in every seed and can sometimes have very positive results in a finished tea, even though the bush will look identical to the one next to it. Over time as the Shui Xian bushes grew and dropped seed, mutated, and those bushes grew and dropped seed, etc. Thousands of phoenix oolongs must exist today which are still undiscovered. The interesting bushes which have been discovered have been successfully cloned and propagated throughout the area and make up the vast majority of the phoenix oolongs on the market.

Ya Shi Xiang or ‘the fragrance of duck shit’ was named that not because the tea smells like duck shit, but because the original creator of this tea made up a lie to keep its location a secret.

There once was a tea maker who would wander the mountainside harvesting wild tea to sell. A beautiful aroma caught in the wind ended up in his nose. He searched the area high and low for the plant which gave off this aroma and found that it was a tea tree that looked identical to the others. He harvested some leaves from the tree and produced a very small batch of fragrant tea.

When he brought his new tea to the market the people went crazy over it, wondering how his tea became so fragrant.

Rather than telling the public that he found an unusual tree, the man decided to make up a lie and told his customers that he tried using duck shit as a fertilizer for some tea trees and this was the result.

When compared to the world of other shits, the odor of duck shit in large amounts is apparently truly horrifying.

And so even though the idea was method was explained and the result so precious, it was too disgusting to deal with for the average farmer, not to mention the logistics of collecting so much of it. The public and his rivals believed him and bought his tea for years and began casually calling it the ‘duck shit tea’.

One day some of his competitors followed him as he went to pick tea and noticed that he only harvested from one specific tree deep in the mountain, and there was no duck shit in sight. Once the tea maker left the scene, his competitors cut off a few branches and created clones from this special tree.

From that point on, although the secret was out and a new name could have been adopted, the fame of ‘duck shit tea’ was so remarkable that the name stuck, and still sticks to this day.

These days ‘the fragrance of duck shit’ exists mostly as young plantation tea. The crass name it has is an easy selling point and the tea rides on its story. There’s a limit to how interesting a young bush tea can be as the bush still wants to devote most of its energy to establishing a root system and getting larger. Old bushes known as ‘Lao Cong’ are not as concerned with growing as they’ve already hit their full size and instead try to focus on staying alive. This particular duck shit tea comes from a quite mature plantation and although its not a ‘single bush’ product like the Mi Lan Xiang I sell, is also half the price.

Teas from Mt. Wudong (乌岽) are the best and have been famous since the Song Dynasty (960~1279). They are the best because of solar aspect, altitude, climate, soil type and the average age of the tea trees (they are on average very old). These concepts collectively known as ‘terroir’ would not be unfamiliar to a wine lover. Red clay — bountiful around Wudong, is rich in minerals, especially iron. Iron gives a better flavor to tea no matter how it gets in (through the tea leaves, teapot, or kettle). Wudong teas grow at altitudes between 950m and 1360m above sea level. The higher up they grow the slower they grow, which in the case of the old trees that Wudong is famous for forces them to grow even slower. The solar aspect of being on a mountain is nice if you’re on the south side. Wudong town is South East of the peak and therefore gets sun for the morning and afternoon while the evening cools down in shade. The weather must be nice, but I have no comment on it. Teas from the nearby Mt. Dazhi (大质山) and Shiguping Village (石鼓坪村) to the East are also very highly regarded, but definitely have no where near the fame of Wudong, especially internationally.

Comparing phoenix oolongs to other dark styles of oolong such as Da Hong Pao and Shui Xian which are produced in Fujian’s Wu Yi mountains is an interesting exercise. I generally dislike Wu Yi oolongs because the charcoal roast that finishes the tea is almost always too deep for my taste. If a phoenix tea has a detectable roasted or smokey flavour it was poorly made and/or released too early. Phoenix teas do go through charcoal baking at the final stage in their preparation which is very important to coax out their full flavor potential. After the roasting process there is a resting period where the teas will shed any unwanted smokiness, this is the reason why phoenix oolongs are generally released in July/August despite being picked in April/May. An apt comparison may be cookies; if you can taste that a cookie is burned or over-baked it detracts from the overall enjoyment, phoenix teas follow the same logic.

The flavor profile of duck shit is very enjoyable. Another tea sold on this site: ‘The Formless One’ Mi Lan Xiang has a 90:10 fruity:floral ratio, duck shit has a 40:60.

The cheeky label