Dark Tea Processing Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
The origin of southern-border tea is directly entwined with the tea-horse trade between Sichuan and Tibet. Ya'an is the distribution hub of the three tea routes of Yunnan, Tibet, and Sichuan; any border-sale tea on this route had to be repackaged and re-pressed at Ya'an for easy packing through passes. Thus in Ya'an's Tibetan-tea craft, what shows the most skill is not tea-making but pressing and packaging: only when the tea is pressed solid can it endure long-distance packing and long storage. By the Qing and Republican eras, the brick-tea firms around Ya'an had turned border-sale tea into a bulk business.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Dark tea is the only tea type that can be stored long-term; its production is entirely hand-operated. Dark tea wins by quality; its making standards are strict and ever-refined, requiring accurate selection, thorough drying, full filling, and tight treading, with each step tightly linked and done meticulously. China's dark teas are most famous for the Anhua thousand-liang tea of Hunan, the Yiyang fuzhuan brick tea of Hunan, and the Ya'an southern-border tea of Sichuan. These dark teas all share traits of long history, deep cultural deposits, and high technological content in their craft. Southern-border tea is produced in Ya'an City, Sichuan, also called "wu tea," "border-sale tea," "southern tea," "Ya tea," "Tibetan tea," and so on. It is completed by hand through natural drying, special pressing, and packaging, and its production craft features heavy fermentation, post-fermentation, repeated fermentation, non-enzymatic fermentation, and color-turning fermentation. Ya'an southern-border tea mainly supplies Tibet, Qinghai, and the Tibetan areas of Ganzi and Aba in Sichuan, enjoying high repute among the Tibetan people. This dark tea has fine quality, a brown-red bright liquor, and a mellow, long taste; it can be mixed with butter, salt, and walnut powder into butter tea, an indispensable daily drink for Tibetan compatriots. With socioeconomic development, affected by information, transport, and supply-demand factors, dark-tea market competition is fierce, price gaps widen, and vicious competition among enterprises has lowered product quality, hurting dark tea's reputation.
Archive of process records
Southern-border tea is produced in Ya'an City, Sichuan, also called "wu tea," "border-sale tea," "southern tea," "Ya tea," "Tibetan tea," and so on. It is completed by hand through natural drying, special pressing, and packaging, and its production craft features heavy fermentation, post-fermentation, repeated fermentation, non-enzymatic fermentation, and color-turning fermentation.
Natural drying for moisture
The leaf dries in wind and sun rather than over fire, so that no moisture is trapped inside the pressed brick.
Repeated and non-enzymatic fermentation
Heavy, post, repeated, non-enzymatic and colour-turning fermentations all occur in one run of the craft.
Adapting the tea for Han drinking
Turning a brick tea for butter-tea drinkers into one for daily Han drinking required every stage to be redesigned.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The distribution center of southern-border tea is Ya'an City, Sichuan, and its products mainly go to Tibet, Qinghai, and the Tibetan areas of Ganzi and Aba in Sichuan. This area calls it wu tea, border-sale tea, southern tea, Ya tea, Tibetan tea—many names indicating distinct places of production and sale. Inheritors such as Gan Yuxiang proposed the idea of "Tibetan tea for Han drinking," turning the tea originally for Tibetan butter-tea into a product also drunk daily in the interior, thereby expanding the craft's uses.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Rectifying and regulating the dark-tea market and protecting and promoting the dark-tea craft have become urgent work at present. Gan Yuxiang (from the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born April 1963, a native of Ya'an City, Sichuan. Representative inheritor of the fourth national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item "Dark Tea Making Craft (Southern-border Tea Making Craft)." While inheriting the family's Tibetan-tea processing technique, he further innovated, improving the leaf plucking, kill-green method, fermentation temperature and humidity, and product shape on the basis of the traditional craft, and proposed the development idea of "Tibetan tea for Han drinking." He actively wrote papers "On Tibetan Tea for Han Drinking from the Tea-Horse Road" and "Promoting Traditional Tibetan Tea Culture, Leading Healthy Tibetan Tea Thinking," led employees in technical innovation, and has applied for three national patents.
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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