Introduction

For much of the twentieth century, merchants, tea shops and households across Guangdong, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia knew a dark, basket-packed tea called Liu'an (六安茶). Today it is officially recognised as Qimen An Cha (祁门安茶), a tea produced in the traditional tea villages around Luxi (芦溪) in southern Qimen County, Anhui.

How a tea produced in southern Qimen came to be known as Liu'an remains one of the unresolved questions in the history of Chinese tea. No surviving document records when the name first entered use. No workshop register explains how it became established, and no commercial record has yet been found that traces its adoption. Its history must instead be reconstructed from tea tickets, manufacturing manuals, local publications, merchant records, oral testimony, later historical studies and the tea itself.

These sources do not carry equal historical weight. Contemporary documents provide the primary evidence wherever they survive. Later publications preserve material no longer available in the documentary record. Oral testimony records workshop knowledge that was seldom written down, while scientific research examines the manufacture rather than its commercial history. Considered together, they preserve much of the history of An Cha without resolving every question.

A Name Without a Complete History

Today, the name Liu'an is more commonly associated with Liu'an Guapian (六安瓜片), the green tea produced in western Anhui. Despite sharing the same historical name, the two teas differ in origin, raw material and manufacture. One of the earliest surviving explanations appears in Qihong Zhizao (《祁红制造》), where Hu Haochuan (胡浩川) recorded that the tea followed the manufacturing method of Liu'an tea and therefore became known as An Cha. A similar explanation appears in Fu Hongzhen's Cha Ming Huikao (《茶名汇考》), published in 1941. Both works preserve essentially the same account, but neither records when the name first entered commercial use or how it became established beyond the producing districts.

A tea ticket issued by Sun Yishun (孙义顺) preserves another part of the story. It records that fine spring tea was procured in Liu'an before being refined and sold through Guangfeng Hang (广丰行) in Foshan (佛山). The document establishes a historical connection between Liu'an, Qimen and the southern market, but it does not explain whether the tea, the raw material or the commercial name moved between them. No surviving transport records or workshop documents have yet clarified that relationship.

The place of manufacture is recorded more consistently. A transcription of the 1932 register published in Qimen zhi Chaye (《祁门之茶业》) lists forty-seven firms producing An Cha, including Sun Yishun (孙义顺), Yizhichun (一枝春) and Yuhuchun (玉壶春). Although the original register has not been located, the same list appears consistently in later publications. By the early twentieth century, An Cha had become an established commercial tea within Qimen's tea industry alongside the county's much larger production of black tea. The surviving evidence therefore preserves two separate strands of history. The place of manufacture can be identified with reasonable confidence. The origin of the historical name Liu'an cannot.

Luxi and the Tea Villages of Southern Qimen
Although An Cha is officially recognised today as a tea of Qimen County, historical records place its manufacture within a much smaller area centred on Luxi (芦溪) in the county's south. The distinction is more than geographical. Qimen has long been one of Anhui's principal tea-producing counties, yet An Cha was never produced throughout the county. The surviving record consistently associates its manufacture with the tea villages around Luxi, where generations of workshops followed the same seasonal cycle of production and supplied the same southern market.

The transcription of the 1932 register published in Qimen zhi Chaye records forty-seven firms producing An Cha. Together they represent a regional industry rather than the work of a single family or workshop. Some names recur in later publications, while others survive only in the register itself. Although relatively little documentation remains for individual producers, the register shows that An Cha formed an established part of Qimen's tea economy during the Republican period.

Within that economy, An Cha occupied a different position from Qimen black tea. Black tea became the county's principal export and established its international reputation. An Cha remained smaller in scale, followed a distinct manufacturing sequence and entered a different commercial network. Its significance lay less in the quantity produced than in the route it followed after leaving the workshops of southern Qimen.

The manufacture remained inseparable from place. Spring processing depended upon locally harvested leaves. Autumn finishing required the same workshops to resume production several months later. Bamboo baskets, ruoye (箬叶) and the accumulated experience of local tea makers belonged to the same manufacturing tradition. An Cha was not simply a sequence of techniques, but a workshop practice rooted in the tea villages around Luxi.

A Tea Made for the South

By the late Qing period, An Cha had become part of the commercial network linking southern Anhui with Guangdong, Hong Kong and the overseas Chinese communities of Southeast Asia. Manufacture remained in the tea villages around Luxi, while much of the tea's commercial history unfolded hundreds of kilometres to the south.

Fu Hongzhen recorded annual sales of approximately three thousand dan to Guangdong and Guangxi. He also noted that physicians in eastern Guangdong prescribed the tea as a medicinal carrier. His account places An Cha within both the commercial trade and the medical practice of southern China during the first half of the twentieth century.

From southern Qimen, the tea travelled through Jiangxi before entering Guangdong. It passed through commercial centres including Foshan and Hong Kong before continuing to Chinese communities across Southeast Asia. By the time a basket reached its destination, months had often passed since the leaves were harvested. Transport, storage and seasonal change had already become part of the tea's history before it reached the drinker.

Many surviving memories of An Cha also belong to these southern markets. Later oral histories describe families storing bamboo baskets through the summer months, medicine shops selling the tea alongside traditional remedies, and merchants carrying baskets between ports around the South China Sea. Although these accounts cannot always be verified through contemporary documents, they consistently place the everyday life of An Cha beyond the villages where it was produced.

By the middle of the twentieth century, many of those most familiar with An Cha had never visited southern Qimen. They knew the tea through bamboo baskets stacked in tea shops, through its character after years of storage, and through the customs surrounding its use. The workshops remained in Luxi. The market, the trade and much of the surviving cultural memory belonged to Guangdong, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

A Manufacture Across Two Seasons
The manufacture of An Cha extends across two seasons. Fresh leaves are harvested in spring, but the tea does not reach its finished form until early autumn. This interval distinguishes An Cha from most Chinese teas, whose manufacture is ordinarily completed within days of picking.

Harvest usually begins around Guyu (谷雨). Fresh leaves are withered, fixed, rolled and dried to produce maocha (毛茶). At this stage the tea is stable enough for storage, but manufacture remains incomplete. The maocha is stored throughout the summer before returning to the workshop around Bailu (白露), when the final stages of production begin.

The stored tea is sorted, blended and fired before being spread outdoors overnight. It is then steamed, wrapped in ruoye (箬叶), packed into bamboo baskets and dried for a second time. The interval between spring and autumn is not a pause between two separate processes but part of a continuous manufacturing sequence, with each stage preparing the tea for the next. Earlier descriptions of An Cha focused primarily on the finished tea rather than on the sequence by which it was made. Historical publications describe its mellow liquor, bamboo aroma and capacity for ageing, but devote comparatively little attention to the gradual transformation taking place between the first drying and the final basket.

A different perspective emerged in 2025 with the publication of Manufacturing Process Analysis and Tea Chemical Component Characterization on An Tea Quality Formation by researchers at Anhui Agricultural University. Rather than analysing only the finished tea, the study followed the leaves through each major stage of production, allowing changes in chemical composition to be observed across the complete sequence.

The study found that transformation continues well beyond the first drying. Catechins gradually decline while larger polyphenol compounds continue to form. Sugars participate in later reactions, and compounds associated with sweetness and mouthfeel become increasingly prominent. Amino-acid-related compounds also continue to change before the tea reaches its final state. These observations suggest that the character of An Cha develops throughout the manufacturing sequence rather than during any single stage.

The complexity of this process has also shaped the way An Cha has been classified. Earlier writers sometimes regarded it as a green tea because manufacture begins with fixation. Modern standards generally classify it as a dark tea because of its later processing, basket ageing and finished appearance. Both descriptions reflect different stages of the same process. Neither fully describes a tea whose production begins in spring and concludes only after the arrival of autumn.

Night Dew

Among the later stages of manufacture, lucha (露茶), commonly translated as "night dew," has received particular attention. After firing, the tea is spread across bamboo mats outdoors for a single autumn night before being gathered before sunrise. The leaves are then steamed, wrapped in ruoye, packed into bamboo baskets and dried for the final time. This stage appears consistently in historical descriptions of An Cha and remains part of the current geographical indication standard.

Workshop practice describes lucha through the condition of the leaf rather than through theory. Tea makers record that firing leaves the tea dry and brittle, while a night outdoors allows them to recover sufficient moisture and flexibility for steaming and basket packing. This practical understanding has long formed part of the established manufacturing sequence.

Modern scientific research approaches the same stage differently. The 2025 study by Anhui Agricultural University followed chemical changes throughout the later stages of production, including the period during which lucha takes place. The study demonstrates that transformation continues during this stage but does not isolate lucha from the remainder of the manufacturing sequence. No published research has yet compared otherwise identical batches produced with and without overnight exposure, and the specific contribution of lucha therefore cannot yet be assessed independently.

The historical record and modern scientific research address different questions. Workshop practice records how tea makers understood the process through repeated experience, while laboratory analysis describes changes taking place within the leaves themselves. Neither replaces the other. Together they provide complementary accounts of the same manufacturing sequence.

Traditional descriptions often refer to the tea taking in the night's moisture or absorbing the dew. Such expressions belong to the language of tea making rather than scientific measurement and continue to appear in contemporary accounts of An Cha. Within the complete manufacturing sequence, lucha forms one stage linking the spring harvest to the final drying in early autumn. Its significance lies in its place within the process rather than in isolation.

When the Trade Stopped
No surviving document records when the manufacture of An Cha came to an end. The available evidence instead describes a gradual decline following the disruption of the southern trade on which the tea depended. For decades, bamboo baskets travelled from the tea villages around Luxi through Jiangxi into Guangdong before continuing to Hong Kong and the overseas Chinese communities of Southeast Asia. Manufacture remained in southern Qimen, but the tea's commercial life depended upon merchants, transport routes and markets extending far beyond the county.

Historical sources identify different points at which this network began to fail. Some associate the decline of An Cha with the disruption of inland transport during the Sino–Japanese War. Others identify the occupation of Hong Kong in 1941 as the decisive turning point, by which time Hong Kong had become both an important market for An Cha and a principal gateway to the Nanyang trade. These accounts do not conflict. They describe disruption occurring at different points within the same commercial network.

As that network fragmented, production declined. By the end of the war, regular manufacture in southern Qimen had largely ceased. During the following decades, the county's tea industry became increasingly centred on Qimen black tea, while An Cha disappeared from regular commercial production. The tea itself did not disappear. Bamboo baskets continued to be preserved in tea shops, medicine shops and private homes throughout Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Singapore. Long after manufacture had ceased in Qimen, older baskets continued to be opened, shared and stored. In these southern markets, the historical name Liu'an remained part of everyday language even as authentic examples became increasingly scarce.

Interviews with Hong Kong tea merchants also describe later teas sold under the name Liu'an that were produced from different raw materials while following a broadly similar style. Tea stems were traded separately as Liu'an gu (六安骨). These belong to the later commercial history of the southern market rather than to the uninterrupted manufacture of An Cha in southern Qimen, but they illustrate how the historical name continued to circulate after the original manufacture had disappeared.

A surviving basket preserves only part of this history. Tea tickets, merchant records, local publications, workshop documents, provenance and the tea itself each preserve different parts of the record. Taken together, they allow much of the history of An Cha to be reconstructed, although not every part can yet be explained.

Recovering a Lost Manufacture

The recovery of An Cha began with a bamboo basket that had travelled the same commercial route many years earlier.

In 1983, Guan Fenfa (关奋发), a Hong Kong tea merchant and one of the founders of the Overseas Chinese Tea Development and Research Foundation, sent a basket of aged An Cha together with a letter to the Anhui Provincial Tea Company. He wrote that the tea had once been widely traded throughout Guangdong, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia but was no longer being produced, and asked whether its manufacture might be resumed.

The basket preserved the tea, its packaging and material evidence of an earlier manufacture. It did not preserve a written method. During the following year, technicians travelled through the former producing villages around Luxi. They visited workshops, examined surviving baskets, compared newly produced tea with older examples preserved in Hong Kong, and spoke with retired tea makers whose knowledge had been acquired through practice rather than documentation.

The recovery drew upon more than a single source. Workshop practice, surviving tea, bamboo baskets, tea tickets, local publications and field investigation all contributed to reconstructing a manufacture that had disappeared from regular production. Different publications therefore identify different starting points. Some begin with Guan Fenfa's letter in 1983; others with the subsequent field investigations, the first successful trial productions or the gradual resumption of manufacture. Together they describe a process extending over several years rather than a single moment of revival.

The An Cha produced today emerged from that reconstruction. Its manufacture was recovered not from a single document or a single surviving basket, but from the combined evidence of historical records, material objects and the knowledge retained by tea makers who had once practised the craft.

Qimen An Cha Today

Today, Qimen An Cha is protected as a geographical indication product. The current regional standard defines its place of origin, raw material, principal manufacturing sequence and traditional bamboo-basket packaging. Compared with the fragmentary record of the early twentieth century, the tea is now documented more systematically than at any previous point in its history.

The documentary record nevertheless remains incomplete. Tea tickets, manufacturing manuals, local publications and commercial records establish the relationship between Liu'an and Qimen, but no surviving document records when the historical name first entered use or how it became established within the southern tea trade. Parts of that history can be reconstructed from the available evidence. Others remain unresolved.

Historical publications, the current geographical indication standard and the reconstruction carried out during the 1980s preserve the same broad manufacturing sequence. Spring leaves are processed into maocha (毛茶), stored through the summer, returned to the workshop around Bailu (白露), then fired, exposed overnight, steamed, wrapped in ruoye (箬叶), packed into bamboo baskets and dried for the final time. Recent scientific research has begun to describe the chemical changes taking place throughout this sequence, while historical sources preserve the workshop practices through which the process developed, was transmitted and was eventually recovered.

The surviving record extends across several regions. Manufacture belongs to the tea villages around Luxi in southern Qimen. Tea tickets and commercial records lead south to Guangdong and Hong Kong. Later collections and oral testimony extend further into Southeast Asia. No single archive, collection or place preserves the complete history of An Cha.

Note on Selected Sources:

This article draws upon several categories of evidence, each contributing to a different aspect of the history of An Cha.

Contemporary publications, tea tickets, manufacturing records and the current geographical indication standard provide the principal documentary foundation wherever they survive. Later historical publications preserve material no longer available in the contemporary record and are treated separately from primary sources. Oral testimony contributes information rarely recorded in workshop documents, particularly concerning manufacturing practice and the recovery of An Cha during the 1980s.

Scientific research serves a different purpose. Analytical studies describe the chemical changes taking place during manufacture but do not replace the historical record. Likewise, historical documents preserve workshop practice without explaining the biochemical processes involved. Throughout this article, each category of evidence has been considered according to the questions it is capable of answering. Where the record remains incomplete, those questions have been left open rather than resolved through speculation.

Historical Publications

• Hu Haochuan (胡浩川). Qihong Zhizao (祁红制造).
• Fu Hongzhen (傅宏镇). Cha Ming Huikao (茶名汇考), 1941.
• Qimen zhi Chaye (祁门之茶业), 1932. Referenced through later published transcriptions.

Documentary Sources

• Tea tickets issued by Sun Yishun (孙义顺).
• DB34/T 1841–2019. Geographical Indication Product: An Cha (地理标志产品 安茶).

Scientific Research

• Wang et al. "Manufacturing Process Analysis and Tea Chemical component Characterization on An Tea Quality Formation." Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2025.

Historical Studies and Field Research

• Si Xiong (司雄). An Cha Xu Xiang Ji (安茶续香记). People's Daily Overseas Edition. 22 June 2019.
• Xun Hui Lai De An Cha (寻回来的安茶).
• Wu Yin Yue Cha (吴垠约茶). Yi Zhong Xiaoshi Le Ban Ge Shiji De Cha (《一种消失了半个世纪的茶》), together with interviews conducted with tea makers, merchants and collectors in Qimen, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.