Anhua Dark Tea
Anhua dark tea (Anhua hei cha) is the umbrella category for the post-fermented teas of Anhua County in Hunan, the historical heartland of Chinese hei cha. It covers the loose 'three tips' grades (tian jian, gong jian, sheng jian), the pressed bricks (fu zhuan, hei zhuan, hua zhuan), and the famous giant compressed logs known as qian liang cha. The single variable that matters most is which specific form you are actually buying, because grade and processing vary enormously under one regional name.
Because Anhua dark tea is a category rather than a single tea, judge the specific grade in front of you. Loose tian jian should be relatively tender and clean with a sweet-wood and pine-smoke character, while the bricks are coarser and more robust. Look for a clean, deep liquor with no sourness or musty off-notes, which signal damp storage gone wrong. Traditional Anhua processing includes a kill-green step, pile fermentation (wo dui), and often pine-fire drying, so a gentle smoky note is authentic rather than a fault. Avoid pressed material that looks like pure stem and dust unless the price plainly reflects that.
Anhua County in central Hunan is the recognized home of this family, with a long border-tea history supplying Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia. Production runs from loose basket-packed grades to dense bricks and the large bamboo-and-palm-leaf-cased logs. Green brick (qing zhuan) is the partial outlier, tied historically more to Hubei than to Anhua, which is why this broad group is often labeled across both Hunan and Hubei. Pine-fire drying over the traditional seven-star stove gives much classic Anhua material its signature smoky-sweet edge.
Gongfu: 6-8 g per 100 ml, 95-100°C, one rinse, then steeps of 10-20 seconds extending gradually, good for many infusions; coarse brick material is forgiving. Western: 4-5 g per 250 ml, 95-100°C, 3-4 minutes. Break bricks gently along the pressed layers rather than crushing them. Many drinkers boil or simmer the later steeps and the spent leaf.
€4-30 (about $4-32) per 100 g, from commodity bricks at the low end to finer loose grades and named qian liang material at the top.
Prices reviewed June 2026
Fu Zhuan
Fu zhuan is the golden-flower brick within the Anhua family, one specific member of this category rather than a separate tradition.
Tian Jian
Tian jian is the top loose grade of the Anhua three tips, finer and smoother than the coarse bricks that share the regional name.
Liu Bao
Liu Bao is the parallel dark tea from Guangxi, basket-aged with a betel-nut note, developed independently of the Hunan school.
Young Shou (1-5 years)
Ripe puerh reaches its dark, earthy profile through wet-pile fermentation in Yunnan, while Anhua hei cha gets there by its own Hunan processing, often with a pine-smoke signature shou lacks.
Anhua is home to qian liang cha, the 'thousand tael tea,' a hei cha compressed inside a woven bamboo and palm-leaf casing into a log that can weigh over 30 kg; the logs were traditionally pressed by foot and ramming poles, then left to cure in the open air.