CNNP teas and State factory teas

[mbanu]

Standardized tin designs with catalog numbers, teas sold by names like "China black tea" or "China green tea" alongside the more recognizable names like Keemun, considered as being "native produce & animal by-products" rather than marketed individually. The history of nationalized tea is very interesting, as is the present-day world of State teas and those factories who still produce teas to this format, so I thought they deserved their own thread.

[mbanu]

Here are an old Sunflower brand lychee congou, and a new Golden Sail brand lychee congou -- the packaging is essentially the same other than the logo on the top. I wonder, what is the story behind these standardized tin designs?

[mbanu]

Or here we have Sunflower and Sprouting brand jasmine, both in the yellow tins with black borders. Is 1032 the catalog number? Maybe it is a grade like with pu'er?

*Edit: Added a picture of a whole modern tin, this one from the Butterfly brand.

[mbanu]

Is 1032 the catalog number? Maybe it is a grade like with pu'er?

With the "China Green Tea" it looks like it is indeed a catalog number. Here is a tin from the Sprouting brand with the mark G401, and a postcard watermarked from a message-board I've never heard of that seems to explain that G401 was for the 100 gram tin and G402 for the 300 gram.

[mbanu]

Is 1032 the catalog number? Maybe it is a grade like with pu'er?

With the "China Green Tea" it looks like it is indeed a catalog number. Here is a tin from the Sprouting brand with the mark G401, and a postcard watermarked from a message-board I've never heard of that seems to explain that G401 was for the 100 gram tin and G402 for the 300 gram.

Hmm, or maybe it was a mixture of both -- it looks like the landscape on the tin was used to clarify the grade, but the catalog number also changed. This looks like a modern version of a G403 or G404 (without anything for scale it is hard to tell for me).

[wave_code]

Despite them not being amazing teas, I've been intrigued by how these state factories/brands split up over time and who produces what now. I'm guessing a lot of it happened just by regional location of the various factories?

There is some cross over between them but it seems like Golden Sail became the main brand for the lichee black tea and the orange and yellow box pu-erh, Butterfly mainly doing the orange tin/bag oolong and different jasmine teas, Sea Dyke being mostly oolong with the orange and red boxes.

[.m.]

In case of Sea Dyke Brand, their traditional products had codes AT***, where AT0** was reserved to premium teas in pewter jars, AT1** to loose leaf in tins, AT2** to loose leaf to paper boxes, and AT3** to teabags. Nowadays their products are more diversified and the coding is hard to follow.

[mbanu]

In 1979 it seems like the State factories were still trying to figure out how to do English-language advertising. Here is an example of an infomercial from the English-language political magazine "China Reconstructs".

[mbanu]

Better effort in 1980, I think, trying to do a health-benefits pitch and includes a recipe, although "tea reduces by 30 per cent the mortality of guinea-pigs exposed to massive dosages of Cobalt 60 radiation" isn't the draw I would have gone with.

[Iizuki]

Better effort in 1980, I think, trying to do a health-benefits pitch and includes a recipe, although "tea reduces by 30 per cent the mortality of guinea-pigs exposed to massive dosages of Cobalt 60 radiation" isn't the draw I would have gone with.

Hah well yeah that might not be the most typical reason why people drink tea

[mbanu]

There's a book on this subject, "Green Gold: The Political Economy of China's Post-1949 Tea Industry" by Dan M. Etherington and Keith Forster. It was published in 1993 when the industry was still nationalized, so it is mostly about these teas, although it is an academic work rather than a popular one so does not focus on particular tins (and was surprisingly tricky to find a dustcover image of- mine was ex-library, so no cover there. ) Keith Forster updated the figures in 2012 in an article for China Heritage Quarterly's tea issue: http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/f ... &issue=029

[mbanu]

Better effort in 1980, I think, trying to do a health-benefits pitch and includes a recipe, although "tea reduces by 30 per cent the mortality of guinea-pigs exposed to massive dosages of Cobalt 60 radiation" isn't the draw I would have gone with.

Hah well yeah that might not be the most typical reason why people drink tea

The quote on the French study was a good idea, though; I hear that this actually started a minor pu'er fad in France as a diet tea during that time, but I am not sure where I would look to find this discussed in popular magazines...

[mbanu]

Advertisements from 1951, helpfully preserved by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and released as part of a larger public records group. The pattern on that tin looks very familiar...

[.m.]

The quote on the French study was a good idea, though; I hear that this actually started a minor pu'er fad in France as a diet tea during that time, but I am not sure where I would look to find this discussed in popular magazines...

Indeed, the classic ripe Xiaguan tuocha 7663 is known as the "French tuo" or "France export tuo". Apparently some F1 yixing pots were
exported there as well during the early 80's.

Edit: Here's the story, https://www.facebook.com/groups/gongfuc ... 5548609141

[mbanu]

An expanded list from 1957, released in the same collection, I think, with more familiar tin designs along the top.

*Edit: I'm surprised by some of the export offerings -- was there really a market for Baimao Hou ("Pai Mao Hou") tea in 1957? Where was it going? America? West Africa? Chinese expat communities? Giving it some more thought, it couldn't be America as the U.S.-China trade embargo would have already started by 1957.