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I was discussing these QS marks on Discord the other day. I don't know how many people know it but there's usually a QS mark like this on the wrapper. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... nknown.png

Anyway, if you google that number written under it you should end up on this site: http://www.qsxuke.com/index.php If not, you can go to that directly and just paste the QS code to the site. http://www.qsxuke.com/qs/QS532814010472.htm Here's one example.

This site shows all kinds of information, including the factory. The third box is the factory name. Search that on google (in Chinese) to go to their website, if there's one. If not, there could be other websites giving some info about it. https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%A5%BF% ... C%E5%8F%B8 Lots of data about the factory. Sometimes you can find pictures too.

The fourth box is the village/location. If it's the Menghai Industrial Park, you probably won't find anything too interesting but since some factories are located in the villages around the Menghai area, you can find pictures and even data on how many people live in that village (sometimes the details are just insane: location, population, amount of cars/farming equipment/motorcycles, agricultural value of the fields etc.).

I thought this was quite interesting. You can go crazy with it and start figuring out where those boutique puerhs are made, if you want to. I already found a few places that don't mention their factories.

Great info, and no doubt useful for many people here.

Unfortunately, at least for the bags used in Fujian for black and oolong teas, the QS mark is just as often for the bag making factory as for the tea inside. I grabbed just checked a handful of bags of tea. Out of the seven bags I grabbed, three had QS marks and four did not. Only one of those three with a mark was for the factory, the other two were for the bag maker.

Of course, having a mark is always better than not. When people ask me where they can get more of a particular tea the first thing I look for is the QS mark. No mark, means SOL as the packaging is most likely generic from a packaging shop.