Oriental Beauty is a heavily oxidised Taiwanese oolong made from young shoots that a tiny insect, the tea green leafhopper, has fed on during the summer. The bites set off the tea plant’s own defences, and careful processing turns that chemistry into the honeyed, softly fruity cup the tea is famous for.
It goes by several names — Dongfang Meiren (東方美人), Bai Hao, and the delightfully cheeky 膨風茶, “boastful tea” — and it arrives with more than its share of stories. Some are true. Some are not. Here is what the evidence actually supports, and how to get the best out of a cup.
Where Oriental Beauty comes from
Oriental Beauty belongs to the low hills of north-western Taiwan, above all Hsinchu and Miaoli counties, with Beipu and Emei the townships most closely tied to its name. Taiwan’s agriculture ministry places the main harvest in June and July, roughly ten days either side of the Dragon Boat Festival, while the leafhoppers are feeding. Neighbouring Taoyuan grows it too: a factory in Longtan took the top prize at the 2025 national Oriental Beauty competition.
Look closely at a good batch and you will see why it is also called five-colour tea. Silvery-white tips sit among leaves of green, yellow, red and brown.
Why a leafhopper bite matters
The leafhopper does not add honey to the leaf. What it does is wound it. Researchers have found that when the insect feeds, the tea plant responds with its own defence chemistry, switching on genes that release more linalool, a fragrant compound. One study found that continuous mechanical wounding on its own produced the same effect, which suggests the plant’s own reaction does much of the work. Another found that several aroma compounds rose in step with the number of insects on the leaf.
For this to happen at all, the insects have to be left alone. Farmers growing for Oriental Beauty must hold back on insecticide while the leafhoppers feed, which makes this a tea that depends on the season as much as on the farmer.
How the honey note is made
The bite gives the leaf potential; the tea maker realises it. Oriental Beauty is withered for a long time — one Emei producer describes more than a full day — then tossed repeatedly to push oxidation well beyond what most oolongs see. Taiwan’s official figure is around 60%, while many Hsinchu and Miaoli farmers take it further, to 75–85%. The leaf is then heated to stop oxidation, rested briefly in a closed box, then rolled and dried.
The chemistry follows the craft. A 2007 study of Oriental Beauty manufacture found several of its key aroma compounds increased during processing rather than in the field. More recent work tracked hotrienol, one of the compounds linked to its signature aroma, and found it rose almost fourfold after the heating step while linalool fell, which suggests the heat converts one into the other. In other words, the insect starts the job and the fire finishes it.
How to brew Oriental Beauty
Treat it more gently than a roasted rock tea. Water around 80–85°C is the usual recommendation, and our own suggestion for our Oriental Beauty loose leaf is 6–8 g in 250–350 ml at 85°C for 30 seconds, adding ten seconds for each of three rounds. Many brewers find that boiling water flattens the honey and pulls out bitterness, so let the kettle rest a minute.
Because the leaves are so varied in colour, this is a tea worth brewing where you can see it. A glass vessel like our fluted glass travel tea set lets you watch the leaves unfurl, and it packs small enough to take to the office or on holiday.
If you would rather not measure leaves at your desk, our Oriental Beauty teabags bring the same tea to a single mug. For a fuller look at how this tea sits among its cousins, our guide What Is Oolong Tea? explains why two oolongs can taste nothing alike.
The boastful farmer and the queen who wasn’t
The nickname “boastful tea” has a real event behind it. According to Taiwan’s National Culture Memory Bank, in 1932 a Beipu grower named Jiang Ruichang sent two catties of his tea to an exhibition in Taipei, and the colonial Governor-General’s Office bought the lot for 200 yen. Back home, his neighbours thought he was bragging. Other tellings change the buyer and the price, so treat the details loosely, but the high price and the teasing name are well attested. Prices are still remarkable: a prize-winning lot at the 2005 Hsinchu County competition sold for NT$1.01 million per catty.
The prettier story — that Queen Victoria tasted the tea and named it Oriental Beauty — has no record behind it. She died in 1901, decades before the tea is documented, and different versions cannot even agree which queen it was. It is a lovely tale to tell over a pot, as long as it is told as a legend.
Frequently asked questions
Is Oriental Beauty an oolong or a black tea?
It is an oolong, though a heavily oxidised one, so its dark, multicoloured leaf and rich cup can remind people of black tea.
Is every leaf of Oriental Beauty bitten by insects?
No, and you cannot tell from looking at the dry leaf, because the bites leave no visible holes; the quality shows in the cup.
Why is it called Oriental Beauty?
Nobody knows for certain; the popular Queen Victoria story has no historical record, while the local name boastful tea comes from a farmer’s high-priced sale in the 1930s.
What water temperature should I use for Oriental Beauty?
Around 80 to 85 degrees Celsius, which keeps the honeyed sweetness and avoids the bitterness that boiling water can bring out.