A long time ago, there was a beautiful, kind and hardworking girl who lived on the west side of Dongting Mountain, her name was Bi Luo. Then there was a young man named A Xiang, a fisherman who lived nearby on the eastern side of the same mountain. Bi Luo and A Xiang were in love.
The couple lived peacefully and quietly until one day, an evil dragon approached Taihu Lake near Dongting Mountain. He wanted to take Bi Luo as his bride, threatening to make all the people lose sleep if she refused. Xiang didn’t think twice and decided to challenge the monster. He dived to the bottom of the lake with his harpoon to fight the dragon. After a hard fight, he managed to kill it.
Unfortunately, A Xiang lost a lot of blood in the fight and fell into a coma. Bi Luo took care of A Xiang but, unfortunately, as time passed, he didn’t seem to be getting better, so the girl decided to go up the mountain to look for an herbal medicine.
At the top of the mountain, he discovered a small tea tree. It was only early spring, and there weren’t many new shoots. Bi Luo decided to put the small shoots in his mouth one at a time, hoping that his breath would warm the leaves, spurring them to grow faster.
And it worked! The sprouts quickly became bigger. He gathered some tender leaves, went home and made tea for A Xiang which improved slightly. Bi Luo went back to the hill and collected all the leaves from the small tea tree, wrapped them in thin paper and meise them against his chest to warm and dry them slowly. He rolled up the leaves and used them to make more tea for A Xiang. Shortly after the treatment, A Xiang woke up and got better quickly.
However, Bi Luo began to weaken day by day. Why? According to this legend, she transferred all her vitality into the tea leaves to cure her beloved. One day, in the arms of A Xiang, she closed her eyes with a sweet smile and never woke up again. Devastated by her death, A Xiang buried her on Mount Dongting.
Since then, the tea bush on the mountain became bigger and bigger and produced tea leaves of an outstanding quality. In memory of this kind and beautiful girl, people then named this precious tea “Bi Luo Chun”.
