---
title: "Ēnshī xīchá"
url: https://thetea.app/article/enshi-xicha
lang: en
updated: 2026-10-01
source: THE TEA — encyclopedia of Chinese tea (https://thetea.app)
---
# Ēnshī xīchá (恩施硒茶)

*Ēnshī xīchá* (恩施硒茶) is the umbrella name for the tea of the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (恩施土家族苗族自治州) in the west of Hubei Province. The character 硒 (*xī*) means “selenium”: the name refers not to a class of tea or to a bush variety, but to a feature of the terroir — soils with a naturally high selenium content. Under this banner the prefecture has gathered its tea brands of different classes, and two of them have become flagships: the green Enshi Yulu and the red Lichuan Hong, the prefecture pair “一红一绿” — “one red, one green”. The name has been protected by a geographical indication certification mark since 2019, and in 2022 the zone of the mark was extended to the whole prefecture.

**1. Classification and Origin:**

* **Type:** There is no single class. The Selenium Tea College at Hubei Enshi College (湖北恩施学院) lists under the umbrella green, red, oolong (青茶, *qīngchá*), dark and white tea, as well as “special” teas. Assigning the umbrella to the green class on the grounds that the best-known tea of Enshi is green would be a conflation.
* **Category:** A prefecture public brand and a geographical indication certification mark; inside it are eight brands (section 2).
* **Origin:** China, Hubei Province (湖北, *Húběi*), Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (恩施, *Ēnshī*).
* **Mark zone:** According to a report on the transfer of the mark in 2022, the production zone was extended to 91 townships, towns, urban subdistricts, development zones and scenic areas in all six counties and two county-level cities of the prefecture. In the 2020 provincial list the holder of the mark was the tea association of the county-level city of Enshi, and the 2026 register still gives the county-level city of Enshi — this is the administrative affiliation of the holder, not the legal boundary of the zone; I have not checked the latter.
* **Geographic coordinates:** Enshi county-level city — about 30.3° N and 109.5° E.

**2. History and Cultural Significance:**

* **History:**
    * **Tea before the umbrella.** According to the Selenium Tea College, the written history of tea growing in the prefecture is more than two thousand years long; Enshi Yulu was created in the Kangxi (康熙) reign of the Qing dynasty, Wujiatai Gongcha ([伍家台贡茶](https://thetea.app/article/wujiatai-gongcha)) has more than three hundred years of history, and Lichuan gongfu red tea more than one hundred and sixty years of export.
    * **2015–2019 — registration of the mark.** The documents for the mark were filed in August 2015. According to the prefecture market supervision bureau, since 2012 the state trademark office had not registered marks for products with selenium — they had become too numerous — and for “恩施硒茶” it made an exception at the end of 2017. In November 2019 the prefecture reported the registration: it was its thirty-fourth geographical mark. According to the provincial list, mark No. 17754772 (class 30, goods — tea, English part “ENSHI SE-TEA”) is valid from 28 July 2019 to 27 July 2029.
    * **2022 — the mark becomes prefecture-wide.** On 20 January the state trademark office approved the transfer of three geographical indication certification marks — 恩施硒茶, [恩施玉露](https://thetea.app/article/enshi-yulu) and [利川红](https://thetea.app/article/lichuan-hong) — to the prefecture tea association, with the zone extended to the whole prefecture. Management is subject to the “five unities”: the brand, the mark labeling, the quality standard, the packaging and the advertising wording are all unified.
    * **Awards.** Together with Lichuan Hong and Enshi Yulu, the name received a gold award at the Hubei geographical indication brand competition (report of the Hubei Intellectual Property Administration, 2022).
    * **2023.** In the reputation ranking of one hundred regional agricultural product brands with geographical marks, *Ēnshī xīchá* is 89th in the overall list and 32nd among teas; Enshi Yulu is 50th and 21st.
* **Eight brands under the umbrella** (according to the list of the Selenium Tea College): 恩施玉露, 伍家台贡茶, [唐崖茶](https://thetea.app/article/tangya-cha), 利川工夫红茶, [鹤峰茶](https://thetea.app/article/hefeng-cha), 炜丰茶, 金果茶 and 武陵龙凤 (金祈藤茶). In Enshi “藤茶” is the name for a drink from the vine *Ampelopsis grossedentata* (显齿蛇葡萄) — this is how the protected product [来凤藤茶](https://thetea.app/article/laifeng-tengcha) of Laifeng County in the same prefecture is described; if the last brand is made from the same plant, the umbrella also covers something that is not tea. I have not checked its composition.
* **Name:** 恩施 — the name of the prefecture and of the county-level city, 硒 — selenium, 茶 — tea. In the English part of the mark selenium is written with its chemical symbol: “SE-TEA”.
* **Cultural significance:** According to a publication for International Tea Day 2022, the prefecture is home to the Tujia, Miao, Dong and other peoples — 28 ethnic minorities in all; among the tea customs named are “little-pot tea” (罐罐茶), “tea in six servings” (六道茶), “oil tea soup” (油茶汤) and the song “六口茶”. The technology of Enshi Yulu is on the national intangible heritage list, and Wujiatai Gongcha is on the second list of the China–EU agreement on geographical indications.

**3. Botanical Description and Raw Material:**

* **Variety / Cultivar:** The umbrella has no single variety; varieties are not named in the sources consulted. The raw material of each brand is described in the articles about it.
* **Raw material and harvest:** Leaf from the mark zone; each brand has its own harvest standard, and there are no data for the umbrella.

**4. Terroir and Cultivation Features:**

* **Region:** West of Hubei Province.
* **Soils:** The main feature of the terroir is a naturally high selenium content. Figures for the soil were not found in the sources consulted; figures for the tea are in section 7.
* **Garden area:** The data differ. The *Hubei Ribao* publication for International Tea Day 2022 gives 1.812 million mu of gardens, of which 1.437 million mu are productive, and 722,700 mu of national-level bases of “green” and organic raw material. The page of the Selenium Tea College gives 1.3 million mu and fifth place among the country’s prefecture-level tea areas; the page does not state the year of the data.
* **Altitude and climate:** No data found in the sources consulted.

**5. Production Technology:**

The umbrella has no single technology: it is set by the class and the brand. Enshi Yulu is a green tea with steam fixation (蒸青, *zhēngqīng*), Lichuan Hong a red tea with full oxidation; the details are in the corpus articles about them.

Encyclopedic summaries mention a 2019 group standard “恩施硒茶”. I have not seen the text of the standard, so I do not give its requirements.

**6. Organoleptic Characteristics:**

Teas of different classes go under one name, so there is no general description.

* **Dry leaf appearance:** No descriptions for the umbrella found in the sources consulted.
* **Dry leaf aroma:** No descriptions for the umbrella found in the sources consulted.
* **Liquor aroma:** No descriptions for the umbrella found in the sources consulted.
* **Taste:** No descriptions for the umbrella found in the sources consulted.
* **Liquor color:** No descriptions for the umbrella found in the sources consulted.
* **Spent leaves (wet leaves):** No descriptions for the umbrella found in the sources consulted.

**7. Chemical Composition:**

The Selenium Tea College gives the following figures for the selenium content of “恩施硒茶”:

| Indicator | Selenium content |
| :--- | :--- |
| Average | 0.21 mg/kg |
| Average in high-selenium areas | 6.42 mg/kg |
| Maximum | 66.66 mg/kg |

The source names no method, year or sample; what exactly the maximum refers to is not unambiguously clear from the text. This is an attributed reference point, not a norm. I draw no health conclusions from these figures.

**8. Health Properties:**

There are no verified data on the effects of this particular tea.

**9. Brewing:**

Class practice — the parameters depend on which of the umbrella’s teas you have in hand.

* **Green (e.g. Enshi Yulu):** 80–85 °C, 3 g per 150 ml, first infusion 40–60 seconds, glass tumbler or gaiwan, two or three repeat infusions.
* **Red (e.g. Lichuan Hong):** 90–95 °C, 3 g per 150 ml, first infusion about a minute, gaiwan or porcelain teapot, several infusions with increasing steeping time.

**10. Storage:**

Class practice. Green tea — in airtight packaging, in the refrigerator at 0–5 °C, away from light, moisture and odors, to be drunk within a year. Red — in a dry, dark place at room temperature, in tight packaging, away from odors.

**11. Price and Counterfeits:**

No price data were found in the sources consulted; each brand has its own price.

* **How to avoid counterfeits:**
    * Look for the geographical indication certification mark “恩施硒茶” (No. 17754772) and the unified labeling of the prefecture brand.
    * Check that the producer is from the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture.
    * Do not confuse it with the separate mark “[恩施富硒茶](https://thetea.app/article/enshi-fuxicha)” (No. 4150055): that is a different name.
    * Selenium in the name guarantees nothing: only a test report can give the figure.

**12. Interesting Facts:**

* Since 2012 the office had not registered marks with selenium in the name; “恩施硒茶” passed as an exception. According to the prefecture report, the path to the mark took more than five years, although it usually takes from half a year to a year.
* Two selenium names of the prefecture coexist in the register — 恩施硒茶 and the older 恩施富硒茶; how they relate legally cannot be established from the sources consulted.
* The mark, registered in 2019 to the association of one county-level city, became prefecture-wide in January 2022 — together with 恩施玉露 and 利川红.
* In the 2023 ranking the umbrella ranks below its own brand Enshi Yulu.

**13. Comparison with Other Teas:**

* **Enshi Yulu (恩施玉露):** A green tea with steam fixation, one of the two flagship brands under the umbrella.
* **Lichuan Hong (利川红):** A red tea of the county-level city of Lichuan, the second flagship brand.
* **Wujiatai Gong Cha (伍家台贡茶):** A green tea of Xuan'en County, one of the eight brands of the umbrella.
* **Hefeng Cha (鹤峰茶):** A green tea of Hefeng County in the same prefecture, also a brand under the umbrella.
* **Kaiyang Fu Xi Cha ([开阳富硒茶](https://thetea.app/article/kaiyang-fu-xi-cha)):** A green tea of Guizhou, also with selenium in its name.

**In Conclusion:**

*Ēnshī xīchá* is not a tea but a banner over teas: a prefecture mark that has gathered under a selenium name the green Enshi Yulu, the red Lichuan Hong and six more brands of different classes. The documents about it describe brand management — the 2019 registration, the transfer to the prefecture association in 2022, the unified labeling — rather than the appearance of the tea. For taste one should go to a specific brand, and for selenium to a test report.