Fang Ting’s approach to Chinese tea starts with a question — not about flavour, but about water. How hot, how soft, poured from what height. Growing up in Xinyang, Henan, the air in spring smelled of fresh Máo Jiān (毛尖) leaves being pan-fired in backyards. That early exposure gave her a bone-deep understanding of green tea’s fragility, but it was a single session in 2011 that widened her path. She sat in a small room in Wuyishan, watching a third-generation yancha maker pour boiling water from a tetsubin onto dark, twisted leaves. The wet leaf released a scent of roasted stone fruit and the edge of a charcoal fire. The mouthfeel was dense, almost oily, and then a wave of minerality coated the tongue. She realised then that tea could be read like a map of its mountain.
Her training after that became systematic and cross-regional. She spent months in Anxi learning how Tiě Guān Yīn (铁观音) processors manage oxidation across different humidity levels, and later in Guangdong, where she cupped dozens of Fènghuáng Dān Cōng (凤凰单丛) cultivars with a renowned producer named Chen Ruiqing. She still uses the cupping sets he gifted her — white porcelain with sharp spouts that direct the aroma straight to the olfactory. That attention to the tool as an extension of the palate is something she carries into every session she leads.
On tea.support, Fang Ting runs the *Brewing question — get a real answer service. It’s not a chatbot; it’s her, reading your message about astringency or flatness and replying with precise advice — often asking for a picture of your gaiwan and the exact timer you used. She’s known for diagnosing a harsh shēng pǔ'ěr (生普洱) brewed too hot in a thick-walled yixing, and suggesting a flash rinse followed by a 10‑second steep in a thin porcelain gaiwan instead. Her guidance has a clarity that comes from having cupped thousands of samples side by side: a 2016 Bàn Zhāng (班章) next to a 2018 Yìwǔ (易武), a first-grade Lóng Jǐng (龙井) against a Ān Jí Bái Chá (安吉白茶).
She also appears regularly across the Teamotea constellation. Her monthly column on puerh.app — “Sheng Benchmarks” — deconstructs a single raw pu’er cake each issue, comparing two brewing styles and the evolution across three steeps. On tea.school, she teaches the oolong cupping module, a practical walk through the six stages of evaluating an oolong’s dry leaf, wet leaf, liquor colour, aroma, texture and finish. The module culminates in a live cross-category cupping where a Wǔyí Yán Chá (武夷岩茶) is tasted beside a Xī Guī (昔归) raw pu’er, revealing how minerality expresses itself differently in each tradition. These sessions often become a starting point for deeper conversations on tea.community, where Fang Ting’s thread on water chemistry for oolong brewing has been picked up by dozens of brewers testing their local tap against spring water.
Her specialisation in cross-category cupping is what makes her answers on tea.support so rich. She doesn’t just tell you to lower the temperature for your Bái Háo Yín Zhēn (白毫银针); she explains how the same technique changed her experience of a 2014 Fú Dǐng (福鼎) white tea — the difference between a flat, hay-like first steep and a second that brought forward a clarity of melon and hint of jasmine. She often advises brewers to keep a cupping journal, a habit she adopted in 2015 after noticing patterns in her own preferences that aligned with certain mountain profiles.
Fang Ting’s roots remain in Henan, and she returns to Xinyang every spring for the harvest. She works closely with a farmer named Zhang Wei, whose family’s small plot on the slopes of the Dabie Mountains produces an organic Xìnyáng Máo Jiān that has become a reference tea in her green tea cupping sets. That sense of place — the latitude, the mist, the granite soil — is something she imparts in every consultation. When you ask her a brewing question, she’ll likely ask you where your tea is from, not just what variety it is, because she knows a Lóng Jǐng* from Xihu doesn’t behave like one from Qiandaohu.
In addition to her work on tea.support, she contributes to tea.travel’s sourcing expedition itineraries in northern China, and occasionally writes teaware reviews for tea.equipment when a new gaiwan shape merits a detailed test. Her own tea sessions are quiet, methodical, and anchored in a single rule: the leaf tells you what it needs, but only if you listen to its first breath of steam.
1 session run by Fang