The History of Lichuan Black Tea (Lichuan Hong)
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Most people who've heard of Lichuan Hong only know one story about it: it's the tea China's president served India's prime minister at a diplomatic meeting in 2018. But that's the last chapter, not the first one. And the real first chapter isn't some smooth centuries-long evolution. It's a trademark fight and one man's workshop experiment, both inside the last twenty years.
Lichuan is a county-level city in the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, a mountainous, mostly rural region in western Hubei province, central China. If you've come across our name before, it's probably through Enshi Yulu, the green tea we're best known for. Lichuan is a separate county-level city within that same prefecture, and it's where this black tea comes from.
Tea Before It Had a Name
People have grown tea in Lichuan since the Western Zhou dynasty, roughly 1000 BCE, according to the old county gazetteers. That's about 2,800 years of continuous cultivation on these mountains, long before anyone called it Lichuan Hong, long before it was black tea at all. By the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644), Lichuan tea was known regionally, and production kept building from there.
How the Whole Region Learned to Make Black Tea
Around 1851, tea merchants from Guangdong province brought skilled craftsmen up from neighboring Jiangxi province into Hefeng, another mountain county in western Hubei not far from Lichuan, to teach local farmers how to process leaf into black tea. That technique spread out from Hefeng into Wufeng, Shimen, and the counties around Enshi, Lichuan included. For decades, tea from this whole district traveled under one regional name: Yihong, short for Yichang black tea, tied to the river port of Yichang that shipped it out.
Real investment in this side of the region came later, and for an unexpected reason. In 1938, a year into the Second Sino-Japanese War (the Asian front of what would become World War II), Hubei's provincial government was forced to retreat inland to Enshi after the city of Wuhan fell to Japanese forces. With the tea country along the middle Yangtze River suddenly cut off, this remote western district became strategically important almost overnight, and tea production here got serious government attention for the first time.
The Man Who Actually Invented Lichuan Hong
Here's the part most guides skip entirely: the tea we now call Lichuan Hong isn't an old trade tea that slowly evolved a new name. It was deliberately invented, and fairly recently.
In 2005, tea makers in the Wuyishan mountains of Fujian province, the same region that produces the smoky black tea known in the West as Lapsang Souchong, developed a new style of red tea made from pure buds instead of the traditional leaf and stem mix. It became known as Jin Jun Mei, and it set off a wave of interest across China's black tea regions in reworking old production techniques into something new and higher grade.
In 2008, a Lichuan tea maker named Wang Qimao took that same idea and applied it to local leaf. He worked out his own version of a bud-forward gongfu black tea (gongfu here refers to a labor-intensive, whole-leaf processing style, not the tea ceremony that shares the name), adapted to Lichuan's growing conditions and local tea plant varieties, and successfully test-produced it that year. He patented the process as “A Production Technique for Lichuan Gongfu Black Tea.” That patent is, as close as anything, the actual birth certificate of what people now drink as Lichuan Hong.
A Name Born From a Trademark Fight
For years after that, this tea still didn't have the name it carries today. Then in 2012, the company holding the trademark for “Yihong” declared that tea producers across Yichang, Enshi, and Lichuan using that name were effectively counterfeiting it, and demanded they stop.
Facing that, Lichuan's deputy mayor at the time worked with local township leadership and two tea companies to come up with a replacement: “Lichuan Gongfu Black Tea,” shortened to “Lichuan Hong.” That became the new trademark, and the region began the process of applying for Geographic Indication (GI) protection under it, a legal status that ties a product's name to its specific place of origin, similar to how “Champagne” can only legally come from that region of France. That status was granted in 2017.
Adoption was slow at first. For years, only those same two companies actually used the “Lichuan Hong” name on their tea. Most other producers in Lichuan kept selling under older labels. That changed after 2018, for a reason nobody in the local tea industry could have planned for.
The Cup That Made It Famous
On April 28, 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sat down together at East Lake in Wuhan and drank Lichuan Hong during an informal summit. That single afternoon did more for this tea's visibility than the previous decade combined, and it's what pushed most of Lichuan's tea businesses to finally adopt the “Lichuan Hong” name themselves.
From One County to the Whole Prefecture
Somewhere along the way, “Lichuan Hong” stopped being just Lichuan's own name for its own tea. The Geographic Indication protection that covers it today extends across the whole Enshi prefecture, alongside Enshi Yulu's GI status. In practice, that means any tea grown in Enshi and processed using the Lichuan Hong technique described above can legitimately carry the name, not only tea grown within Lichuan county's own borders.
To sell it legally inside China under that name, a producer still has to hold Geographic Indication certification specific to Lichuan Hong, which comes with real requirements: approved production steps and specific equipment standards in the factory, subject to inspection. It's not a name anyone can put on a bag.
Ours is grown at Wildbrook Village, in the same Flowit Garden where we grow our Enshi Yulu, not inside Lichuan county itself, and processed using the technique described above. That's what makes it legitimately Lichuan Hong under the current rules, not the county line the tea started in back in 2008.
| Year | What Happened |
|---|---|
| ~1000 BCE (Western Zhou) | Tea cultivation begins in Lichuan |
| 1368–1644 (Ming dynasty) | Lichuan tea known regionally |
| ~1851 | Black tea processing technique introduced via Hefeng, spreads through the region |
| 1938 | Hubei's provincial government relocates to Enshi during the Second Sino-Japanese War |
| 1980 | The “cold cream down” cultivar discovered in Maoba township |
| 2005 | Jin Jun Mei innovation in Wuyishan, Fujian, sparks a wave of premium red tea reinvention |
| 2008 | Wang Qimao invents and patents the Lichuan Gongfu Black Tea technique |
| 2012 | Trademark dispute over “Yihong” forces the new name “Lichuan Hong” |
| 2017 | Approved as Geographic Indication protected product |
| 2018 | Served to Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi at East Lake, Wuhan; name adopted widely across Lichuan |
What Marks a Genuine Lichuan Hong
There's a specific phenomenon Chinese tea drinkers look for called “leng hou hun,” or “cold cream down.” As a properly made Lichuan Hong cools, the liquor develops a faint golden-brown cloudiness. It's not a flaw, it's a sign of high polyphenol and caffeine content bonding together as the temperature drops, and among people who know black tea, it's treated as a genuine mark of quality.
That characteristic traces back to one specific tea tree. In 1980, a local agricultural technician doing a routine cultivar survey in Maoba township found a single mutant tea bush with unusually large leaves, growing near a village school. Cultivation and testing continued for decades after that discovery before the variety was successfully developed into a stable, plantable cultivar. It's now the tea most associated with Lichuan Hong's signature cloudy cup.
What It Tastes Like
Ours comes out wiry, dark, with golden tips. The liquor pours a deep ruby amber. Honey and sweet potato hit first, then ripe apricot and lychee move in through the middle, and it finishes floral with a trace of damp wood. No bitterness to fight through, no need to rush the steep.
How to brew: 90°C / 194°F water, 4g per 100ml. First steep just 8 seconds, this tea moves fast. Add about 5 seconds to each steep after that, and it holds up for 5 to 7 rounds. For a smoother, thicker body, push the water up to 92 to 95°C.
For tasting notes from the makers keeping this craft alive in Lichuan today, see Lichuan Black Tea: The Honey Glow of Enshi's Mountains.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lichuan Hong (Lichuan black tea)?
Lichuan Hong is a bud-forward gongfu black tea (a labor-intensive, whole-leaf processing style, not the brewing ceremony of the same name) from Lichuan, a county-level city in the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Hubei province, China. The production technique was developed by local tea maker Wang Qimao in 2008, inspired by the Jin Jun Mei style pioneered a few years earlier in Fujian's Wuyishan mountains, the same region known for Lapsang Souchong. The name “Lichuan Hong” itself only dates to 2012, and the tea earned Geographic Indication (GI) protected status in 2017.
Does Lichuan Hong have to be grown in Lichuan county?
Not anymore. The Geographic Indication status that protects the name today covers the whole Enshi prefecture, not just Lichuan county. Any tea grown within Enshi and processed using the Lichuan Hong technique can legally carry the name, provided the producer holds the required GI certification, which sets specific standards for production steps and factory equipment. Our own Lichuan Hong is grown at Wildbrook Village, elsewhere in Enshi, using that same technique.
Is Lichuan Hong the same as Yihong?
Not exactly, though the two are related. Yihong (“Yichang red tea”) was the historical trade name for black tea produced across a much wider stretch of western Hubei, dating to the mid-1800s. Lichuan was part of that same tea district for generations. But in 2012, a trademark dispute forced Lichuan's producers to stop using the Yihong name, and the modern Lichuan Hong that emerged afterward, both in production technique and in branding, is its own distinct tea rather than a simple continuation of Yihong.
Why did Xi Jinping and Modi drink this specific tea?
In April 2018, the two leaders met informally at East Lake in Wuhan and were served Lichuan Hong during their tea conversation. At the time, only a couple of local companies were even using the “Lichuan Hong” name. The attention from that meeting is largely what pushed the rest of Lichuan's tea industry to adopt it too.
What does “cold cream down” mean?
“Leng hou hun” (冷后浴) describes the faint cloudy, golden-brown haze that develops in a cup of Lichuan Hong as it cools. It results from polyphenols and caffeine binding together at lower temperatures, a trait tied to a specific local cultivar discovered in Maoba township in 1980. It's considered a mark of a well-made, high-quality tea, not a defect.
How should I brew Lichuan black tea?
Use 90°C / 194°F water, about 4 grams of leaf per 100ml. This tea moves fast, so keep the first steep short, around 8 seconds, then add roughly 5 seconds to each round after that. It holds up for 5 to 7 steeps. If you want a smoother, thicker body, try water closer to 92 to 95°C.
This article is part of the Enshi Tea Knowledge Series by FlowInverseTea. Written by June, tea farmer and apprentice in Enshi, Hubei.