The use of seals on Zhangping Shui Xian tea cakes

The use of seals on Zhangping Shui Xian tea cakes

You might have noticed from our other blogs and documentaries about Zhangping Shui Xian, that sometimes these compressed oolong tea cakes have a printed red seal on them. As we prepare to release some special batches of Zhangping Shui Xian with these seals, we thought we better explain the history behind the seals and how they are used today.

Historical use of the seals

Over a hundred years ago, Zhangping Shui Xian started to be shipped to Guangzhou and then exported from there to customers in Southeast Asia. An early tea maker named Liu Yongfa had the idea to print information about the tea onto the cake wrappers, such as the name of the producer and origin. Below are two old tea cakes kept in a small museum in Zhangping, bearing these tradtional seals.

We must remember in that day and age there was no trademark registration in China. So the forward-thinking early producers of Zhangping Shui Xian used these seals to ensure the tea cakes exported overseas could be traced back to the producers and local brands in Zhangping city. Historically, the seals performed this combined function of export identification, trademark, and branding.

Contemporary use of the seals

Nowadays there are still seals which only signify the brand of a tea distributor or shop, but the more important seals today are the personal seals which only belong to the master producers like the Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritors. These seals are passed down through generations of a tea producing family, and signify a master producer's quality judgment. Below is the seal of Chen Qiguang, maker of our Traditional Zhangping Shui Xian. He reserves his seal for special batches of his old bush 15 gram cakes (coming soon).

If a master prints their seal on a certain batch of their tea, it means he or she personally considers that batch to be special or of the highest quality. This does not mean unsealed batches are not good. Printing the seals by hand is a time consuming process so a producer won't seal every batch they make, even if the quality is consistently high. They will usually reserve the seal for what they consider to be the highest quality batch they made in a season, or special batches like wild old bush material. Below you can see producer Shen Tian Xing applying his seal to a special batch of his wild old bush Zhangping Shui Xian (coming soon).

This is interesting because this seems to make the master's seal not only a quality assurance measure but also a measure of the tea producer's 'house taste.' Naturally, the tea master will gravitate towards sealing a batch which best represents their own style of tea, processed according to their preferences. This is not to say their judgment is too subjective. Far from it. These are experienced tea producers who also often serve as judges at the annual tea competitions, so they know what quality tea is. But they also know what the best of their own tea is, and that is where a slight house taste influence comes into the decision to print their seal on a particular batch. It is fitting then, that each master's seal belongs only to them and can only be used by them. The seal signifies what they consider to be their best tea in their own tea making style. As Master Shen Tian Xing said in our documentary, "every tea maker has a different understanding of tea-making."

In a broader context, the Zhangping Shui Xian seals represent the skill involved in oolong tea production. While for other tea types drinkers might focus only on the tree material and not know the producer's name, the skill required in oolong production means the producer has a huge influence on what brews in the cup. The personal seals of the Zhangping Shui Xian producers signify that influence which they have developed over generations. So when looking at a seal on a cake of Zhangping Shui Xian, we should think about the skilful work done to shape the raw leaves into the tea we enjoy.

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