Da Yan bows to Mao Ying and offers her more tea.

"We are drinking "Monkey Picked" Tieguanyin Oolong tea, one of the most prized teas grown in China. According to legend, golden monkeys were trained by monks to collect the leaves from the branches of the wild tea trees growing on steep mountainsides.

"And there is naturally a legend surrounding the origin of this magical tea, which is named after the Iron Goddess of Mercy T’ieh-Kuan-Yin," Da Yan smiled and proceeded to tell the tale.

Long ago in Sand County, Fujian Province, China, there lived a tea farmer named Mr. Wei. Each morning and evening he used to pass by a temple dedicated to the Goddess T’ieh-Kuan-Yin. Though he was a poor farmer, he was moved by the even poorer condition of the temple. So began to make regular stops there to burn incense inside the temple, sweep the floors and clean the statue of the Goddess.

Seeing Mr. Wei’s deep devotion to her temple, T’ieh-Kuan-Yin appeared to him in a dream and said: "Deep in a cave located behind my temple is a treasure that will last you for generations, but in order for it to become valuable you must share it with all of your neighbors."

Waking up and rushing to the cave behind the temple, Mr. Wei searched and searched for the treasure, but all he found was a small sprig of a tea bush. Disheartened, he took the sprig home and planted it in his tea garden. Over the next few years it grew into a bush. When he made tea from the leaves of this bush, he noticed it had unique fragrance and amber infusion that last over many subsequent steeps of the same leaves.

Mr. Wei began propagating the bush until he had hundreds of tea bushes and remembering the instructions of the Goddess, gave shoots and seeds to all of his neighbors. Traders in the Capital heard of the famous tea named after T’ieh-Kuan-Yin and the region which specialized in growing it. Soon all the farmers in Sand County became prosperous and Tieguanyin Oolong developed a national reputation. The people of the province were not only prosperous, but wise, for they repaired T’ieh-Kuan-Yin's temple and continued to put funds aside for its upkeep.