There are many different types of Chinese tea. The major types include green tea, black tea, oolong tea, white tea, yellow tea, and dark tea. Their major differences lie in taste, fragrance, color, appearance, growing areas, making process and health benefits, etc.

1. Green Tea

Green tea is the most popular type of Chinese tea made by taking new leaves or buds of the tea tree to go through three main processes, frying, kneading and drying. Processed green tea leaves appear to be slim, tight and dark green, curled like a snail, and covered by pekoe. The tea soup is clear and green. Drinking green tea regularly can insulate yourself from getting cancer, overweight and lower the damage of nicotine to the minimum for those chain smokers.

2. Black Tea

Black tea, called red tea in Chinese, is the 2nd main trending type of Chinese tea. It is a fully fermented tea, which gives it a stronger flavor. People can get the refined one through a series of technological processes, such as withering, kneading, fermentation, drying and so on. The dry black leaves are dark but the tea soup is red. Black tea can help us in gastrointestinal digestion, promoting appetite, eliminating edema, and strengthening heart function.
 

3. Oolong Tea

Among these 6 different types of Chinese tea, oolong tea is semi-fermented, which has the fresh frgrance of green tea and the mellow taste of black tea. Even after 7 times steeping, you can also smell its fragrant flavor. The medical function of oolong includes decomposing fat, reducing weight and building body shape, so it also is called “cosmetic tea” in Japan.
 

4. White Tea

White tea, belonging to micro-fermented types of Chinese tea, is a traditional famous tea. Different from other types mentioned above, white tea is made only by drying by the sun or gentle frying without the process of kneading. The dry tea leaf is slim in shape and green in color, covered by the white fuzz. The tea soup is light green. The health benefits include refreshing mind, cooling body, and remising fever.

 Famous white tea: Baihao Yinzhen, Baimudan, Gongmei
 

5. Yellow Tea

The making process of yellow tea has something in common with green tea, except for the key point that makes a real yellow tea, oxidizing before or after the drying to give it a yellow appearance. Yellow tea began to be bred almost 2,000 years ago in Sichuan, a southeast province in China. Spleen and stomach can be two beneficiaries if you develop the habit to drink yellow tea regularly; the risk to get ingestion, loss of appetite and obesity will get lower. 

6. Dark Tea

Famous dark tea: Yunnan Pu’er, Guangxi Liubao Dark tea is also a type of fermented tea, named so because the appearance of the processed tea is black. Dark tea is not widely known as other types of Chinese tea, but it is the material to make compressed tea like brick tea. Dark tea earns the reputation for its amazing nutritional ingredients, such as Protein, amino acids, and sugar substances, which can help you relief greasy, promote digestion and resist oxidation of the skin.