Chóngqìng pípá chá

Chóngqìng pípá chá (崇庆枇杷茶) is “Chongqing tea with a leaf like the loquat’s”, a mountain green tea from the northwest of Chongzhou county-level city (崇州市) under Chengdu, Sichuan Province. There is no loquat (枇杷, Eriobotrya japonica) in it: this is the nickname of the tea trees themselves, for their leaf resembling a loquat leaf. “Chóngqìng” (崇庆) is the old name of the prefecture and the county; it shares only its sound with the city of Chongqing (重庆). The description of the agricultural indication speaks only of green tea, although today red, white and dark tea are also made from the same raw material.

1. Classification and Origin

Type: Green tea (绿茶, lǜchá): all three schemes in the indication description begin with fixation (杀青, shāqīng).
Category: Sichuan mountain green tea; geographical indication product.
Origin: China, Sichuan Province (四川, Sìchuān), Chengdu city, Chongzhou county-level city (崇州, Chóngzhōu); the center is the town of Wenjingjiang (文井江镇).
Protection zone: The Longmenshan Mountains (龙门山) within the boundaries of the towns of Huaiyuan (怀远镇), Sanlang (三郎镇), Jiezi (街子镇), Wenjingjiang and Jiguanshan Township (鸡冠山乡): five townships and towns, 23 villages.
Geographic coordinates: According to the indication description — 103°19′24.1″–103°28′1.8″ E, 30°44′49″–30°47′16″ N.

2. History and Cultural Significance

History:
- Legends. According to legend, the tea was sent to the court as “Longmen gongcha” (龙门贡茶); the sources diverge on dates: the local press writes now of the Song, now of the Song and Ming, while the indication description and a Sichuan tourism portal write of the Qing. The same description calls Chongzhou one of the eight famous tea districts of the Tang and Song eras — these are the source’s words, not a verified fact.
- Chronicles. The Chronicle of Chongqing Prefecture (崇庆州志) of the Guangxu era describes pípá chá as trees one or two zhang tall with coarse, large leaves; the tea from them was called “coarse” (粗毛茶, cūmáochá). According to a retelling on a tea reference website, the Chronicle of Chongqing County (崇庆县志) mentions trees two or three zhang tall, from whose young buds local people made tea as a substitute for pu-erh; the chronicle itself could not be checked.
- 1959. A staff member of the tea institute of the Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences studied pípá chá for more than a year in Wanjia (万家乡) and Goujia (苟家乡) townships and published the article “Chongqing pípá chá” in the journal Tea (茶叶), 1959, No. 5. According to the press retelling, the article attributed the good quality of red tea from this raw material, and its resemblance to Dianhong, to the high content of tannins and extractives.
- 1965. Pípá chá was included among the country’s 21 best tea varieties.
- 1985. According to the indication description, the provincial variety commission recognized pípá chá as one of the five local elite varieties of Sichuan.
- 2009 and 2019. In June 2009 the name was registered as an agricultural product geographical indication (AGI); in 2019 the technique of making pípá chá entered Chengdu’s intangible heritage list.
- 2025. By announcement No. 646 of September 23, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) recognized Chóngqìng pípá chá as a geographical indication product. According to a reference encyclopedia, in December of the same year the technique of making it entered the provincial intangible heritage list as an extension of the seventh batch; this could not be checked against the primary source.
Name: 崇庆 (Chóngqìng) is the old name of the prefecture and the county; 枇杷 (pípá) is the loquat, after the shape of the leaf; 茶 (chá) is tea.
Cultural significance: The title “China’s home of pípá chá” (中国枇杷茶之乡) is held by the town of Wenjingjiang. The town’s spring harvest festival was held for the nineteenth time in 2022, the twentieth in 2023 and the twenty-first in 2024.

3. Botanical Description and Raw Material

Variety / Cultivar: Not a bred cultivar but a local population (群体品种, qúntǐ pǐnzhǒng) formed by natural development and selection. Arborescent (乔木型, qiáomùxíng), large-leaf type. The indication description uses “崇庆枇杷茶” both as the name of the tea and as the name of the variety. According to the local press (2022), the plant breaks bud early, gives fleshy buds and leaves and branches well, and the tea from it is aromatic, rich and withstands many infusions; the publication calls Chongzhou the only home of pípá chá.
Appearance: According to the local press, the trees grow taller than 10 m. The oldest is considered to be a tree on Dapingshan Mountain (大塀山) in Wenjingjiang: according to a Sichuan tourism portal (2021), it is more than 400 years old and 9.2 m tall.
Old trees: According to the local press, Wenjingjiang has more than a thousand trees over a hundred years old (an administrative division reference names 1135, the indication description 1292 old arborescent trees in the whole of Chongzhou); older than a thousand years — “more than 10” (2022) or “more than 20” (2024). Chayuan Village (茶园村) of Jiezi Town, according to a 2026 report, also has more than a thousand trees over a hundred years old; its gardens lie in the Giant Panda National Park and have organic certification.
Harvest: In early spring, in March. Pickers climb onto the branches with a rope and pluck a bud with one or two leaves. Bulk tea, according to the indication description, is harvested in spring, summer and autumn.

4. Terroir and Cultivation Features

Region: The mountains of northwest Chongzhou: the indication description names the Longmenshan range, the Sichuan tourism portal — Qionglaishan (邛崃山).
Growing altitude: The mountains of the area rise from 700 to 3868 m; the indication description names an altitude of about 1000 m as optimal and requires gardens to be laid out at that same altitude. The local press gives 800–1400 m for Wenjingjiang.
Climate: Mean annual temperature 15 °C, precipitation 1200 mm, relative humidity 84 %, frequent fog in the mountains.
Waters and forest: The rivers of the area — the Xihe (西河), Heishihe (黑石河) and Jinmahe (金马河) — belong to the Minjiang basin. Forest, according to the local press, covers more than 95 % of Wenjingjiang Town.
Soils: Acidic purple soils of the Cretaceous and acidic yellow soils of the Jurassic, pH 4.5–6.5; for a garden plot the indication description is stricter — loams and sandy loams more than 70 cm deep, pH 4.5–5.5, slope less than 25°.
Agronomy: Seedlings are planted in early October, and three years of formative pruning create the plucking surface; nitrogen — not more than 60 kg per mu a year.
Lowering the trees: According to the local press, the crowns were lowered from 5–6 to 2–3 m, and a garden comes into harvest in about three years; plantings are moving into the low mountains of the towns of Daoming (道明镇) and Yuantong (元通镇).
Area: According to the local press (May 2024), pípá chá gardens in Wenjingjiang grew from 2150 mu in 2020 to more than 3600 mu; the annual volume is more than 350 t (whether this is fresh leaf or finished tea is not specified), and the total output value is more than 30 million yuan. According to the local press (October 2024), in Chongzhou pípá chá is harvested from more than 5000 mu.

5. Production Technology

The description of the agricultural indication permits three green tea schemes:

Flat famous tea (扁形名茶, biǎnxíng míngchá): fresh leaf — fixation — shaping (做型, zuòxíng) — drying; the raw material is a single bud.
Maofeng (毛峰, máofēng): fresh leaf — fixation — shaping — “raising the down” (提毫, tíháo) — drying.
Bulk tea (大宗茶, dàzōngchá): fresh leaf — fixation — rolling (揉捻, róuniǎn) — drying.

For all three the condition is the same: fixation through and through and evenly, without red stalks or leaves. The description gives no temperatures or times.

Yet at the masters’ competition in Jiezi Old Town on May 15–17, 2026, the tea was made by the scheme spreading — withering (萎凋, wěidiāo) — rolling — fermentation — drying, that is, as red tea.

The local press (January 2026) named withering as the weak point: on the advice of specialists, the spreading density, ventilation, temperature and humidity were changed and the withering time was shortened. The class of tea is not named in the report; the green schemes of the indication description have no withering. According to a May 2026 report, more than 20 Chongzhou companies process pípá chá, and their range includes red and white tea and oolong (青茶, qīngchá).

6. Organoleptic Characteristics

According to the description of the agricultural indication; one description for all three types.

Dry leaf appearance: Buds large and plump (芽头肥壮); the leaf flat, fairly even and straight; the color yellow-green, with an oily sheen (色泽黄绿油润).
Dry leaf aroma: No separate description in the sources consulted.
Liquor aroma: Rich chestnut (栗香浓郁).
Taste: Fresh, mellow, brisk (鲜醇爽口).
Liquor color: Yellow-green, bright (黄绿明亮).
Spent leaves (wet leaves): Yellow-green, even, bright (黄绿匀亮).

On other classes there are only the words of a local publication (January 2026): the red tea gives a golden, sweet liquor resembling Dianhong, and the biancha (边茶) comes out rich and holds up to many infusions.

7. Chemical Composition

The description of the agricultural indication gives ranges: polyphenols 13.2–26.8 %, catechins 6.2–13.4 %, amino acids 2–4.8 %, caffeine 1325–1902 mg/kg, flavonoids 7.3–11.8 %, extractives 42.6–53.5 %, soluble sugars 0.72–1.28 %. They call for caution:

Caffeine is the only indicator given not in percent but in mg/kg: 1325–1902 mg/kg is 0.13–0.19 %. Whether there is a unit error here cannot be checked from the sources consulted.
The indication description compares pípá chá with Fuding (福鼎): extractives higher by 11.9 %, polyphenols by 35 %. Whether these are percent or percentage points, and which sample was used for comparison, is not stated.

8. Brewing

Class practice for green tea.

Water temperature: 80–85 °C.
Tea amount: 3 g per 150 ml.
Teaware: Glass tumbler or gaiwan.
Process: Warm the teaware, pour the water down the side, first infusion — 40–60 seconds, then two or three more infusions, leaving part of the liquor.

9. Storage

Class practice. In airtight packaging, in a refrigerator at 0–5 °C, away from light, moisture and odors; best drunk within a year.

10. Price and Counterfeits

Price data are not found in the sources consulted.

How to avoid counterfeits:
- The indication description requires the agricultural product geographical indication mark to be placed on the packaging together with the name “崇庆枇杷茶”.
- Check the address: the zone is the five towns and townships on the list; the towns of Daoming and Yuantong, where new plantings are going, are not on the list.
- The protected product is green tea; red or dark tea from pípá chá does not fit the indication description.

11. Interesting Facts

The 1959 article, according to the press retelling, explained the good quality of red tea from pípá chá, while the indication description writes that large-leaf raw material usually goes into red tea, but in Chongzhou only green tea is made from pípá chá.
According to the indication description, in 1970 pípá chá trees were taken to Yongchuan for breeding, and in eight years the Chongpi 71-1 (崇枇71-1) variety was bred. When it was brought back to Chongzhou in 1993, it broke bud 10–15 days later and withstood 2–3 fewer infusions; from this the description concludes that the properties of pípá chá hold only under local conditions.
Jiguanshan Township, according to the administrative division reference, was merged into Wenjingjiang Town in December 2019, but it is listed separately in the zone list of the indication description.
The present town of Wenjingjiang was called Wanjia until November 2006 — it was there, as in neighboring Goujia Township, that pípá chá was studied in the 1950s.

12. Comparison with Other Teas

Dujiangyan Chaye (都江堰茶叶): Green tea of Dujiangyan county-level city under the same Chengdu.
Qingcheng Xue Ya (青城雪芽): Green tea of Mount Qingchengshan in Dujiangyan.
Dianhong (滇红): Yunnan red tea from large-leaf raw material; red tea from pípá chá is compared with it.

In Conclusion:

Chóngqìng pípá chá is a green tea from arborescent trees, for whose leaves pickers climb onto the branches with a rope. The indication description speaks of a flat yellow-green tea with a chestnut aroma, while the history of the raw material pulls toward red tea — from the 1959 article to the 2026 masters’ competition.

Sources

Geographical indication

CNIPA 地理标志产品认定 №646

Full list — on the Sources page