Dark Tea Processing Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Fuzhuan brick tea is a unique item within the dark tea category: other dark teas stop at pile-fermentation and compression, but only it can develop "flowers" (the golden mold) inside the brick, allowing beneficial microorganisms to continue growing within the pressed brick body. Therefore, the formulation and pressing craft must leave room for this flowering. The square-brick shape itself is also part of the craft — dark tea is the only tea type that can be stored long-term, and the brick shape facilitates stacking and long-distance transport, so every brick shipped from Yiyang must withstand this journey. The fuzhuanin A and fuzhuanin B brought by the flowering inside the brick are the reason this category was given its own name.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Dark tea is the only tea type that can be stored long-term, and its production is entirely manual. Dark tea wins by superior quality; its making standards are strict and pursued with excellence, requiring accurate tea selection, thorough drying, full filling, and tight trampling, with every step of the production process interlocking and carried out meticulously. China's dark teas are most famous for Anhua Qianliang tea of Hunan Province, Yiyang Fuzhuan brick tea, and Ya'an Nanlu border tea of Sichuan Province. These dark teas all share the characteristics of long history, profound cultural deposits, and high technological content in their making techniques. Fuzhuan brick tea is produced in Yiyang City, Hunan Province. It is the only tea variety in the dark tea category that has the flowering process and thus can generate beneficial microorganisms. It is made from high-quality dark maocha (raw dark tea) as raw material, through pile-fermentation, fermentation, molding by tamping, and flowering. For hundreds of years, in Northwest China, Fuzhuan brick tea has stood alongside milk and meat, becoming a daily necessity for various ethnic minorities thanks to its irreplaceable unique efficacy, and has been praised as the "mysterious tea" of China's ancient Silk Road and the "tea of life" for the ethnic minorities of the Northwest. The two active substances uniquely contained in Fuzhuan brick tea — fuzhuanin A and fuzhuanin B — can promote human metabolism and significantly reduce fat, blood lipids, cholesterol, glycerides, blood sugar, and blood pressure.
Pile fermentation
The rough tea is piled and covered to heat and darken, setting the base colour of the brick.
Pressing into bricks
The fermented tea is steamed, put into moulds and pressed into square bricks tight enough to hold their shape.
The flowering of Fu tea
Only Fu brick grows golden blooms of beneficial fungus inside the brick, and the stage must be watched hour by hour.
Four working rules for Fu brick
Accurate selection, thorough drying, full packing and firm treading govern every stage from raw leaf to brick.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Yiyang, together with Anhua and Ya'an, forms the three major dark tea production areas: Anhua produces Qianliang, Yiyang produces Fuzhuan brick, and Ya'an produces Nanlu border tea, each following its own path. Fuzhuan brick is made from high-quality dark maocha through pile-fermentation, fermentation, tamping-molding, and flowering. The growth of the microbial colony inside the brick requires stable temperature and humidity, so the brick-pressing workshops and tea farms around Yiyang have always regarded this stage as more important than the speed of producing bricks. In recent decades, enterprises like those in Yiyang have written the parameters of brick pressing and flowering into operating procedures, turning this technique from a feel in the master's hands into verifiable standard actions.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Fuzhuan brick tea integrates medicinal value and collectible value, and has had a profound influence on people's material and cultural lives. Liu Xingyi (from the official archives of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in May 1964, a native of Yiyang City, Hunan Province. Representative inheritor of the fifth batch of the national-level intangible cultural heritage item "Dark Tea Making Technique (Fuzhuan Brick Tea Making Technique)." A Fuzhuan brick tea-making technician, senior tea appraiser, deputy head of the Fuzhuan Tea Working Group of the National Technical Committee on Tea Standardization, and a council member of the Hunan Tea Society. For more than thirty years, he has long been engaged in the inheritance, protection, and dissemination of the Yiyang Fuzhuan brick tea-making technique. He has organized the production and technical requirements of the Fuzhuan brick tea-making technique into written and data-based form, continuously adjusted technical parameters and craft skills, formulated related production technical operating procedures for Fuzhuan brick tea, presided over and participated in the formulation and revision of national standards for Fuzhuan brick tea, and combined inheritance with innovation.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Gan Yuxiang 04-1906
- Li Shengfu 05-2851
- Liu Xingyi 05-2852
- Wei Jiequn 05-2853
- Chen Guofeng
- Jia Genshe
- He Jiangang
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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