CNNP teas and State factory teas

[.m.]

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

Nice find. Technically speaking this list is even from the pre-CNNP era, as CNNP started only in 1972.
Here's some chronology https://helloteacup.com/2017/09/14/hist ... nnp-cofco/

[mbanu]

A "China Black Tea". The basic design seems the same as for the lychee congou, although the edge trim is a little different. More questions on the top stamp as well; this seems to be from after the switch to "animal by-products" branding, but maybe before the development of separate brands for each tea branch?

[mbanu]

A new(ish) Butterfly brand Lapsang Souchong with QS code, and an older tin without a code. The design makes me think that this tin was introduced after the other black tea tins, but I'm not sure.

[mbanu]

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

That's very interesting! Supposedly this is what French packaging looked like recently (I think this is for minis?). "Nature" is specified because of the popularity of flavored pu'er like lotus or ginseng.

[.m.]

That's very interesting! Supposedly this is what French packaging looked like recently (I think this is for minis?). "Nature" is specified because of the popularity of flavored pu'er like lotus or ginseng.

Yes, i think this is a commonly sold supermarket puerh, but not sure if it is made by Xiaguan.

Here's one for the collection: late 80s/early 90s (my guess) "Slimming Tea" , a black tea from Hubei province.

[mbanu]

A modern Butterfly brand baimudan tin.

[mbanu]

That's very interesting! Supposedly this is what French packaging looked like recently (I think this is for minis?). "Nature" is specified because of the popularity of flavored pu'er like lotus or ginseng.

Yes, i think this is a commonly sold supermarket puerh, but not sure if it is made by Xiaguan.

Here's one for the collection: late 80s/early 90s (my guess) "Slimming Tea" , a black tea from Hubei province.

Very nice! "Hubei Tea & Ramie Branch" is an interesting one -- I guess that in areas where tea was not as large an industry the branches were consolidated?

I think you are right about the Distriborg-packaged pu'er no longer being Xiaguan; I know Xiaguan produces mini-tuos, but I don't think I've ever seen flavored ones from them...

[.m.]

I had to google what ramie is. They should have consolidated it with the hemp branch too.

[mbanu]

Three slightly different packages of Sow Mee, one from a finished Hong Kong auction at L&H, one from what seems to be the Sunflower English-language wholesale website, and a third from blogger wilson from around 2012. Lots of interesting things here!

First, I am curious when Sunflower started selling shoumei white tea; according to the 1957 list, it either was not exported then or was sold as a green tea. This is a little confusing for me because in the pre-nationalized era sow mee was a grade of tea that could be applied to tea from a few different places, so it is not clear if the placement in the 1957 export list is to clarify that it is not being made as a white tea, or something else.

Two of the three modern packages have a Spanish translation! Is there a Spanish-speaking region where this type of tea is popular? Also, curiously, one package has no Spanish; is this one older than the other two? A swap from gms to g also, and no mention of ChinaTea.

There also seems to be a slight change in the anti-counterfeiting, as the older ones have a sort of shadow-pattern behind the birds, while the new one does not. (Or maybe this is on the plastic wrapping?)

[mbanu]

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.

This is really puzzling. If I understand correctly, Butterfly, Sunflower, and Sprouting all are different brands of Fujian tea, but it is not really clear what distinguishes them to me... all three make jasmine, for instance.

[mbanu]

A new(ish) Butterfly brand Lapsang Souchong with QS code, and an older tin without a code. The design makes me think that this tin was introduced after the other black tea tins, but I'm not sure.

Also a modern Lapsang Souchong tin; the Butterfly brand stamp is added to the tin on the barcode side and the QS is removed, with SC info listed on the other side, it looks like.

[mbanu]

A modern Sprouting gunpowder green tea! Now this was a surprise to see, I normally only see Temple of Heaven (Shanghai) or Camel (Zhejiang) gunpowder and the dodgy brand "Dragon's Tower" where I am not quite sure if it is a State tea or if gunpowder tea of all things has counterfeits now.

[mbanu]

In another thread there was surprise over China's low per-capita consumption of tea, so I thought this might also be a good thread to bring up tea-ration tickets (茶票 I think), which were a thing in China for many years. Sadly I don't know much about them. Here is a tea-ration ticket from 1972.

[mbanu]

Some more tea-ration tickets, this time in a sheet. Not sure when these are from, though.

[mbanu]

A Sunflower brand long jing tin. This one is a bit puzzling as I had thought Sunflower belonged to the Fujian tea branch, not the Zhejiang. Was it originally a shared brand of some sort? Are old CNNP tins collecting counterfeits now?