Dark Tea Processing Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Liubao tea originated in Liubao Town, Cangwu County, in the east of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and its making craft is distributed across villages such as Buyi, Tangping, Siliu, Lichong, Shanping, Gongping, and Can in Liubao Town, the place of origin of Liubao tea. As early as the beginning of the Ming dynasty there was a Liubao tea named after Liubao in Duoxian Township, Cangwu. The Cangwu County Gazetteer of the 13th year of the Tongzhi reign of the Qing dynasty (1874) records: 'Tea is produced in Liubao, Duoxian Township; its flavor stays mellow overnight without changing, and its color, aroma, and taste are all excellent.'
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Liubao tea making craft is a traditional skill that uses tea leaves grown locally in Cangwu County as raw material, producing a dark tea of distinctive quality through multiple processing steps. The Liubao tea making craft is complex: it takes locally grown tea leaves as raw material and proceeds through low-temperature baking fixation, rolling and shaping the leaves into strips, then initial steaming, heaping, and re-steaming, and finally pine-wood open-flame baking, airing, and aging to complete the tea. The distinguishing feature of the Liubao tea making craft lies in the stage from initial steaming to re-steaming, the purpose of which is, through the action of heat and moisture, to promote changes in the internal substances, reduce the bitter and astringent taste, mellow the flavor, dispel the raw and harsh notes, and turn the leaf color into a deep yellow-brown green. These steps must be repeated two to three times; when the leaves develop a sticky juice and give off a characteristic mellow aroma, the process has reached the proper point. For several hundred years Liubao tea production has continued to flourish and develop, and the traditional Liubao tea making craft has been passed down from generation to generation through master instruction and family transmission and has spread widely. With its qualities of 'red, thick, mellow, and aged,' its keeping quality for long storage and growing mellowness with age, and its health-preserving benefits, Liubao tea is deeply loved by the people of southern China and Southeast Asia. The Liubao tea making craft is the creative labor and crystallization of wisdom of the working people of Cangwu over long production practice; it is one of the representatives of China's dark-tea making crafts, an important carrier of local cultural history, and possesses valuable historical and cultural value.
Documented Process Record
These steps must be repeated two to three times; when the leaves develop a sticky juice and give off a characteristic mellow aroma, the process has reached the proper point.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Liubao tea is divided by season into 'pre-She tea,' 'Qingming tea,' 'production tea,' and 'frost-descent tea'; its appearance is blackish-brown and lustrous, its liquor an amber yellow-red, and when drunk it is mellow, thick, and sweet-refreshing, with the aroma of betel nut. For a long time most farmers in the Cangwu area have made their living by growing tea, and the local folk tea-making craft has thus been passed down through the generations.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present, in the tea factories in the Heshishan area of Liubao Town, Cangwu—the place of origin of Liubao tea—and in some farmer family workshops, the traditional handmade tea craft is still maintained. Wei Jiequn (as recorded in the official archives of the associated inheritor): Female, Han ethnicity, born in February 1958, a native of Cangwu County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item Dark-Tea Making Craft (Liubao Tea Making Craft). A Liubao tea-making technician. At age 18 she entered the Liubao Commune tea factory, learning the tea-making craft from her predecessors and serving as a technician at the commune factory. At age 30 she returned to her village to make and sell tea, and at age 45 founded the first Liubao farmhouse tea factory—the Heshishan Tea Factory. After forty years of accumulated experience she has mastered superb tea-making skills, able to gauge by feel the temperature and timing needed for pan-firing, balance the rolling pressure evenly, and make the leaves curl into whole rolls, forming a unique craft character. Through models such as 'company plus farmer' and cooperatives, she has supported hand-tea-making farm households, purchased large quantities of local fresh tea leaves, and selected technically skilled people to serve as production workers and technicians at the factory. She demolished the old factory and built a 1,200-square-meter plant, together with a more-than-100-square-meter exhibition hall for intangible cultural heritage. She has not only focused on making tea but also devoted herself to cultivating successors; her daughter Shi Rufei was recognized in 2009 as a regional-level representative inheritor of intangible cultural heritage. Over the past ten years, together with her daughter she has compiled the family's inherited traditional methods and improved techniques into standardized operation manuals and taught them to large numbers of trainees, implementing standardized training for Liubao farmhouse tea. In 2015 the Heshishan Tea Factory was designated a regional-level demonstration base for the productive protection of intangible cultural heritage.
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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