In this episode Derek discusses the origins of West Lake Dragonwell Green Tea, or Xihu Longjing. We go all the way back to the Jin Dynasty, the monk Xie Lingyun from the Tiantai mountains bringing the first seeds to the West Lake area. We talk about the 18 imperial tea trees. And we even cover the modern Republican Era of this region in the mid 1900s, wherein we hit an interesting tangent on the nature of Truth, Revolution, Nihilism, Marxism, Taoism, and a little bit Buddhism all in the West Lake Dragonwell production area.