STiR coffee and tea magazine

26 STiR coffee and tea | 2025 Quarter 4 Winter (Dec/Jan/Feb) T By Seth Griffin Dark Tea's Dark Secret he Chinese cities of Pu'er in Yunnan province and Liu Bao in Guangxi province are both registered geographical indications (GIs) for internationally acclaimed tea products, relying on regional authenticity to market their teas. However, behind the scenes, unscrupulous merchants reap massive profits by sourcing less ex- pensive teas from Southeast Asia and falsely labeling them as famous GIs, thereby pre- venting Southeast Asian teas from establishing their own branding and gaining market access in China. Tea maker Zheng Shifei (pseudonym) from Menghai city in China's Yunnan prov- ince has been sourcing teas from Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam since 2017, but few of them are advertised as such. A row of tea cakes made from Southeast Asian materials sits on his shelf. He points to one labeled Yiwu, one of Yunnan's more famous terroirs. "If we disclose that this tea is from Myanmar, it fetches a lower price," he admits. Many of the other labels use creative naming to skirt questions about origins, like a cake mysteriously called Spring Dew. "That one is from Vietnam," Zheng continues, but a closer look at the back of the wrapper lists the ingredients as "Yunnan large-leaf sun-dried tea," a common label in the industry. The only Southeast Asian tea on the shelf with a clearly marked origin is from Phongsaly, Laos, which has gained enough of a following in the Chinese market to stand on its own. Of course, tea makers do not select these teas at random. In the most common scenario, they take extensive sourcing trips throughout mainland Southeast Asia to find attractively-priced teas that closely match the taste profiles of customer favorites like Laobanzhang or Yiwu, import the teas back to Yunnan, and begin the next steps of carefully blending the foreign teas with local materials to reduce the overall produc- tion cost and increase profit margins. A thick-bodied tea from Doi Wawee in Thailand might be mixed with material from Bulangshan, while sweeter materials from Nyot Ou in Laos or Dien Bien in Vietnam may be passed off as Yiwu tea, completely erasing the contributions and origins of these outside teas while maintaining a squeaky-clean image of GI authenticity. This practice also muddies the water for consumers trying to understand what a famous terroir actually tastes like. "If you buy tea in the town of Yiwu, you have no idea if you are drinking genuine Yiwu tea," says Li Chunhua, a tea maker from the renowned tea village of Guafengzhai, Yiwu. "Guafengzhai was one of the villages that helped raise demand for Yiwu tea, but now tea from Guafengzhai is regularly faked. Some people try the mislabeled tea, and it gives them a false impression of Guafeng- zhai tea, which is completely unfair." Factory workers in Ha Giang, Vietnam, prepare tea for shipment to Guangxi, China, where it will be labelled as 100% Liu Bao from Guangxi. A Liu Bao tea blending Chinese and Vietnamese materials, named 'Distant Mountain', purposely misleads consumers on the tea's true origin. Dark Tea With a Darker Secret The dark tea capital of Liu Bao in Guangxi is another example of deliberate misdirec- tion by industry insiders, who hide the widespread use of teas sourced from other regions of China or from Tuyen Quang (formerly Ha Giang) in northern Viet- nam, though the practice dates back to the 1980s. The Liu Bao GI was registered in 2011, and the technique for making Liu Bao tea was included in the fourth list of forms of Chinese national intangible cul- tural heritage in 2014. The official narrative now empha- sizes the tale of traditions dating back to the Qing dynasty, when Liu Bao tea was shipped to Malaysia and provided much- needed relief to laborers in tin mines, helping them cool off in the scorching heat and grueling work conditions. The name Liu Bao itself conjures expectations of a specific origin in Guangxi province, and branding connects the tea's historic trade routes to a branch of the Maritime Silk Road known as the Ancient Tea- Boat Road. The new framing pressures tea pro- ducers to obscure the origins of their teas in the interest of marketability. Feng Cuiyu (pseudonym), a tea maker of more than 30 years in Wuzhou, commented on the conundrum, stating, "Liu Bao is the name of a specific place. If you openly admit that 'well, the aroma you enjoy ac- tually comes from elsewhere,' that pres- ents a huge problem."

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