CNNP teas and State factory teas

[mbanu]

Oolong tea section. As expected, a lot of Sea Dyke. The coding pattern .m. mentioned for Sea Dyke in the past seems to be mostly the same today. DunHuang is a new brand to me, though -- does anyone know anything about it?

A 1975 ad featuring mostly classic Sea Dyke packaging, for non-specified oolong, da hong pao, shui xian, tie guan yin, ming xiang... also (I think) a Sunflower brand in the lower right corner, and the patterned box with the yellow picture is currently used for DunHuang brand tie guan yin, although of course I don't know what role it served in 1975.

[mbanu]

Maybe it is only me asking, but I think I've found an answer to the question, "With so much privatization of former State tea factories, which ones are still a part of ChinaTea?" This was from a financial report, and seems to be the list of 12 factories connected to ChinaTea that have Shengchan codes, meaning these are where the tea would be processed.

List seems to be:

Fujian

1. Fuxing Tea Factory
2. Jianou Tea Factory
3. Songxi Tea Factory
4. Quanzhou Tea Factory
9. Xiamen Tea Factory
11. Jianou Luyuan Tea Factory

Hunan

5. Hunan Tea Factory
6. Anhua Tea Factory

Yunnan

7. Menghai Tea Factory (This being ChinaTea Menghai, not Taetea)
12. Fengqing Tea Factory

Guangxi

8. Wuzhou Tea Factory

Guangdong

10. Shantou Tea Factory

So I guess that Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Anhui are no longer part of ChinaTea?

There seems to be a ChinaTea office in Anhui though, just no tea factory -- so where are they packaging the tea? Does the office just buy bulk tea in Anhui and then send it down to one of their other factories for packing, similar (I imagine) to how Golden Sail in Guangdong can offer a lu'an gua pian tea from Anhui? Or do they just not trade in teas from that region, but rather use the office to promote their other teas in Anhui? How tea travels around China is still very confusing, even with shengchan codes, GB/T, and nationalized factories to consolidate things a bit.

[mbanu]

Is there such a thing as counterfeit gunpowder green tea? It really does seem hard to believe, given how much gunpowder the state factories seem to produce, but then there are these odd look-a-like brands... Maybe from a less popular State factory?

Green tea section. Interestingly there is no Sprouting brand gunpowder -- was this discontinued before 2020, or is trying to reach the gunpowder market with Fujian tea a new thing? Also, no mention of the big players like Camel or Temple of Heaven, although that two-camels-and-a-palm mark looks suspiciously like a copycat...

In one case, at least, it was indeed from a less popular State factory! The doubletriple-camels is actually a brand of the Hunan Tea Branch for their green teas. (Monkey King being their brand for jasmine teas and some black teas, and Hundred Dragons seeming to be originally a black tea brand but now used for a few different things.) If Zhejiang developed the Camel brand in 1990, when did Hunan develop the "Safinet e' Sahraa" brand?

An update! It looks like Safinet e' Sahraa brand started in 2000. Also, a packet along with an Algerian knock-off brand, "Triple Camel". I was tempted to post this in the West African green tea culture thread, but figured it is best to keep the State factory tea-facts together.

With all this mention of number of Camels, I realized I haven't posted a picture of straightforward Camel brand gunpowder from the former Zhejiang Tea Branch. If you are used to other gunpowder packaging, it is mostly the same. However, they've been experimenting recently with new tea styles, such as making shoumei tea-cakes under that brand. (Not sure if made with Zhejiang leaves or not.)

They also seem to be having fun with the cigarette-pack sizes of chunmee. I'm not sure if this is a re-design, although to me it looks more modern West African than old CNNP.

[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.

A jasmine tin from the Zhejiang tea branch! I think this is a later-model as it is an "Animal By-Products" tin but it has a plastic rather than metal inner lid. This is under the Topscent brand. (I think that for the privatized company, Topscent is now mainly the brand for their Jiu Qu Hongmei.) Strangely the "Animal By-products" branding is on the bottom of the tin... I would not think something like this would be counterfeited, though.

[mbanu]

What seems to be a vintage tin of Yingde black tea. Sprouting branding but from the Guangdong tea branch. As far as I am aware, this is the only actual category of tea created out of the laogai forced-labor tea farm system. Normally these laogai teas seem to just be made in whatever the local regional style of tea is...

Since in the thread we are in Zhejiang, here is some old footage from a laogai forced-labor tea farm in Anji County in Zhejiang, the Nanhu tea farm. According to a customs release, it looks like they've sold tea in the past through Zhejiang Sanmei Tea Co., Ltd., but I'm not sure if they just bought the tea to re-sell or if they are the formal tea sales branch for them. Zhejiang Sanmei was originally started in 1986 to produce steamed tea copies for export to Japan, and also to export well-known Zhejiang teas (longjing, etc.). Much like Yingde, I am not really sure about the present-day status of this farm.

[wave_code]

An info sheet on some of the different Duoteli era box designs. if google is translating correctly then the black box was originally for the Japanese market, which is interesting.

[mbanu]

The relationship between CNNP export tea and Japan is very interesting, I agree! I may need to correct my earlier statement that Yingde is the only laogai style, as I believe that steam-fixed teas were no longer produced in China by 1986, and now there is a national standard, GB/T 14456.6, for these teas.

This is the old logo for Zhejiang Sanmei Tea (also sometimes called Zhejiang Sanming Tea). Would this have been on the export packaging, I wonder?

[mbanu]

A 1975 ad featuring mostly classic Sea Dyke packaging, for non-specified oolong, da hong pao, shui xian, tie guan yin, ming xiang... also (I think) a Sunflower brand in the lower right corner, and the patterned box with the yellow picture is currently used for DunHuang brand tie guan yin, although of course I don't know what role it served in 1975.

So what exactly is a "Ming Xiang" oolong, does anybody know? The name would make me think it is a grade of oolong, but normally they did grades by number... The tin versions provide a very CNNP explanation.

[mbanu]

An ad from 1988 for the loose-leaf variety of Hainan black tea. Interesting in that this is the first CNNP ad I've seen that tries to be fashionable -- I'm sure those models were quite up-to-date for the time.

An ad or perhaps catalog copy that features a closer look at the tins. I am having a bit of trouble finding out what happened with Hainan black tea after the companies started to privatize. On the packaging for the teabags, at least, it was the Guangdong branch that was listed -- did Hainan not have its own provincial import & export company or office subsidiary?

[mbanu]

Two of the three modern packages have a Spanish translation! Is there a Spanish-speaking region where this type of tea is popular?

Not sure if this is related, but here is a photo supposedly from the Fujian Tea Branch visiting Tijuana, Mexico, for a trade fair, I think sometime in the 1980s. (I will admit, I know nothing about Mexican tea-culture.)

[mbanu]

An ad from 1988 for the loose-leaf variety of Hainan black tea. Interesting in that this is the first CNNP ad I've seen that tries to be fashionable -- I'm sure those models were quite up-to-date for the time.

An ad or perhaps catalog copy that features a closer look at the tins. I am having a bit of trouble finding out what happened with Hainan black tea after the companies started to privatize. On the packaging for the teabags, at least, it was the Guangdong branch that was listed -- did Hainan not have its own provincial import & export company or office subsidiary?

It sounds like this category of tea may be going extinct. I guess it was caught in the squeeze between the low-cost black teas of Hunan and Sichuan and the name-brand black teas of Anhui?

[mbanu]

It has actually been pretty tricky to find any information on the Sichuan Tea Branch. Their black teas were a popular bulk export to the United States in the 1980s for use in iced-tea blends, but I can't seem to find packaged teas by that branch, even though in 1987 there were 17 tea factories working under that branch... (They did give out promotional calendars, though. )

[mbanu]

Someone is promoting an import-tracking/bill of lading website on /r/tea that is allowing free search, so I thought I'd see if it might help with the bulk tea tracking. Nothing for the Sichuan Tea Branch (possibly because I am not sure of it's new name) but a fun graphic from the Hunan Tea Group. It is a little misleading, as many American tea-merchants buy through U.S. importers, but it looks like Harney & Sons is a big believer in Hunan teas.

*Edit: It looks like the Hunan Tea Group is distinct from ChinaTea Hunan, although being founded in 1989 it is likely they were connected before -- let's see if I can find more info...

[mbanu]

On the other hand, Numi Tea seems to be a big fan of Guangdong's Golden Sail. (This also highlights something I have not mentioned due to it seeming a bit off-topic, which is that a lot of these former national tea companies have side-lines exporting a variety of random items, which can sometimes lead to odd import results.)

[Victoria]

Interesting, can you provide sources for those graphs?