Tea is categorized into black tea, green tea, yellow tea, white tea, oolong tea, and dark tea六大类. These can be further processed into scented tea, compressed tea, instant tea, bagged tea, fruit-flavored tea, and canned tea. Among them, green tea accounts for the highest proportion.

There is a wide variety of teas, each with distinct quality characteristics. Ms. Luo Shaojun, a senior tea appraiser and renowned tea expert in China, has provided a relatively detailed explanation. Briefly, it involves evaluation based on four aspects: color, aroma, taste, and shape.

Color includes the appearance color and the liquor color. New tea has a tight, heavy, fully-dried appearance with a fresh color. High-grade green teas like West Lake Longjing, Dongting Biluochun, Huangshan Maofeng, Xinyang Maojian, and Liuan Guapian appear tender green, while old tea is loose, dark, and soft. When selecting tea, a pure and lustrous appearance color is good, whereas a variegated and dull color is inferior. The tea liquor should be bright and clear for premium quality, dark and turbid for poor quality.

Aroma: Good quality tea generally has a pure and refreshing fragrance. If the tea has a faint aroma, no aroma, or even an off-odor, it is certainly not good tea. Jasmine tea is favored by many consumers, its greatest characteristic being the rich aroma of jasmine flowers. If this aroma is absent, its quality is likely problematic.

Taste refers to the flavor of the tea liquor. Taking green tea as an example, good quality green tea has a slight bitterness upon entry, followed by a fresh sweetness, with a long-lasting aftertaste. If it is heavily bitter and astringent with little or no freshness and sweetness, it is inferior tea. For Kung Fu tea, a sweet and brisk taste is good, a flat taste is inferior; for broken black tea, a slight bitterness upon entry with a refreshing aftertaste and a hint of sweetness is good.

Shape refers to the physical form of the tea leaves. Different teas have their own unique shapes, standing out distinctively in myriad forms. For instance, Dongting Biluochun tea is described by local tea farmers as "covered in fuzz, copper wire strips, bee's legs." This means Biluochun tea is covered with white pekoe, referred to by experts as densely covered with fine hairs when evaluating - Biluochun with more fuzz is superior, less is inferior; "copper wire strips" means the tea strips are tight and heavy, tighter is better, looser is worse; "bee's legs" refers to the tea's form being slender and long like a bee's leg. These three aspects are important characteristics for distinguishing genuine Biluochun and assessing the quality of its processing technique.