---
title: "Hónghú héyè chá"
url: https://thetea.app/article/honghu-heye-cha
lang: en
updated: 2026-10-01
source: THE TEA — encyclopedia of Chinese tea (https://thetea.app)
---
# Hónghú héyè chá (洪湖荷叶茶)

*Hónghú héyè chá* (洪湖[荷叶](https://thetea.app/article/heye)茶) is “Honghu lotus leaf tea”, a drink made from the lotus leaves of Honghu county-level city (洪湖市), Jingzhou prefecture-level city, Hubei Province. There is no tea leaf in it: it is a tea substitute processed in the tea manner — fixation, rolling, drying. Honghu lives by the lotus, and one plant here has four geographical indications: for the rhizome, the seeds, the young shoots and this leaf. The name has been protected by an agricultural indication and a certification mark since 2021, and since 2025 as a geographical indication product.

**1. Classification and Origin:**

* **Type:** A tea substitute made from lotus leaf, not tea from *Camellia sinensis*. The protection requirements call the finished product “tea leaf” (成品茶叶), but its only raw material is lotus leaf. It does not belong to any of the six classes of tea.
* **Category:** Geographical indication product; part of the Honghu lotus cluster together with 洪湖莲藕, 洪湖莲子 and 洪湖藕带.
* **Origin:** China, Hubei Province (湖北, *Húběi*), Jingzhou prefecture-level city (荆州, *Jīngzhōu*), Honghu county-level city (洪湖, *Hónghú*).
* **Protection zone:** The entire county-level city — 21 township-level units: two urban subdistricts, an economic development zone, fourteen towns, Laowan Hui Ethnic Township and three management districts (Datonghu, Dashahu, Xiaogang); in all, 49 villages and 9 urban communities. The applicant is the Honghu Lotus Industry Development Center (洪湖莲藕事业发展中心).
* **Geographic coordinates:** 113°07′–114°05′ E, 29°39′–30°02′ N.

**2. History and Cultural Significance:**

* **History:**
    * **Lotus on the lake.** According to a legend cited by the Xinhua news agency, lotus has been grown in Honghu since the middle of the Yuan era, when the lake finally silted up.
    * **Tea from the leaf.** The MAIGOO reference site, where this article was uploaded by a user of the site, writes that under the Qing the lotus leaf drink was a court drink and that the tradition survived into the 20th century, citing the *Honghu City Gazetteer* (《洪湖市志》); elsewhere the same reference traces the custom back to the Qin and Han. Primary sources are not found in the materials consulted, and both datings remain unverified.
    * **1990s.** According to the same reference, Honghu refined the recipe on local raw material and moved to standardized production.
    * **2021.** Registration of the agricultural product geographical indication (according to the MAIGOO reference — in April). In the same year, according to the same reference in December, the geographical indication certification mark No. 51600492 was registered — this is how it appears in the list of the Hubei Intellectual Property Administration.
    * **2024.** The province adopted the “Seven Provisions on Lotus” (藕七条), raising the “洪湖莲藕” brand to the provincial level; in line with them, the Lotus Industry Development Center was set up in Honghu — the future applicant for protection.
    * **2025.** By announcement No. 640 of the China National Intellectual Property Administration of 16 July 2025 (on the website — 13 August), the drink was recognized as a geographical indication product, in a batch of 1409 names.
* **Name:** 洪湖 — Lake Honghu, which gave its name to the city; 荷叶 — lotus leaf; 茶 — tea.
* **Cultural significance:** According to *Hubei Ribao*, in September 1991 the lotus became the city flower, and Honghu held a lotus festival. The name of the lake is known throughout the country from the film “Red Guards on Lake Honghu” and the song from it — the newspaper considers this the basis of the recognizability of the local lotus brand.

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

* **Plant:** Lotus (莲, *lián*; leaf — 荷叶, *héyè*), an aquatic plant of lakes and ponds.
* **Variety:** Under the protection requirements — mainly local traditional varieties. Xinhua counts four groups of Honghu lotus — floury rhizome lotus (粉藕莲), crisp rhizome lotus (脆藕莲), seed lotus (子莲) and lotus for young shoots (藕带莲), more than ten varieties in all; which of them supply leaf for tea is not stated in the sources consulted.
* **Raw material:** Fresh leaf. The MAIGOO reference writes of whole leaves 20–50 cm in diameter, picked in early summer; these figures are not in the protection text.

**4. Terroir and Cultivation Features:**

* **Region:** The Jianghan Plain in southern Hubei. Lake Honghu, according to *Hubei Ribao*, is the largest freshwater lake of the plain; in all, the county-level city has 102 lakes.
* **Climate:** About 30° N; subtropical humid monsoon — plenty of light and rain, hot summers, cool winters, precipitation mainly in spring and summer.
* **Soils and water:** Xinhua calls the lake an important protected wetland area, the “kidneys of Hubei” (湖北之肾). Deposits of aquatic plants have produced fertile “blue clay” (青泥巴), rich in organic matter, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
* **Scale:** According to *Hubei Ribao* (2023), lotus in Honghu occupies about 220,000 mu; there are no data on the area from which leaf for tea is picked.

**5. Production Technology:**

The 2025 protection requirements set out the scheme:

1.  **Picking (采摘).**
2.  **Washing (清洗).**
3.  **Slicing (切片).**
4.  **Fixation in a microwave unit (微波杀青, *wēibō shāqīng*).** In tea technology this stage generally serves to stop the enzymes of the leaf.
5.  **Three cycles of rolling and drying (3次揉捻及烘烤).**
6.  **“Raising the aroma” (提香, *tíxiāng*).**

There are no parameters — temperatures, times, moisture at the stages — in the protection text. The MAIGOO reference speaks of twelve operations but lists only six.

**6. Organoleptic Characteristics:**

The description is taken from the 2025 protection requirements.

* **Dry leaf appearance:** Strips (条索状) or granules (颗粒状), blue-green or light green in color (青绿色或浅绿色).
* **Dry leaf aroma:** The characteristic freshness of lotus leaf (荷叶特有的清香), without foreign odors.
* **Liquor aroma:** An elegant lotus aroma (荷香清雅).
* **Taste:** Clean and mild (口感清醇).
* **Liquor color:** Clear and bright (汤色清靓); the shade is not named in the text.
* **Spent leaves (wet leaves):** No descriptions in the sources consulted.

**7. Chemical Composition:**

Physicochemical norms set by the protection:

| Indicator | Norm |
| :--- | :--- |
| Water-soluble extractives | not less than 30.0 g per 100 g |
| Free amino acids | not less than 1.2 g per 100 g |
| Flavonoids (黄酮) | not less than 0.8 g per 100 g |
| Moisture | not more than 6.00 g per 100 g |

These are thresholds, not measured values of a particular tea.

**8. Health Properties:**

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

**9. Brewing:**

Class practice. There are no parameters for this drink in the sources consulted; below is the usual practice for dried leaf that is brewed like tea.

* **Water temperature:** About 90–95 °C.
* **Amount:** 2–3 g per 150–200 ml.
* **Teaware:** A glass tumbler, a gaiwan or a small teapot.
* **Time:** First infusion — 2–3 minutes; then one or two further infusions.

**10. Storage:**

Class practice. In airtight packaging, in a dry, dark place, away from odors. The product's moisture norm is low — not more than 6%, and an opened package is best closed tightly.

**11. Price and Counterfeits:**

Price data are not found in the sources consulted.

* **How to avoid counterfeits:**
    * Look for the special geographical indication mark next to the name 洪湖荷叶茶; the right to it is given to producers from the zone on application to the city intellectual property authority, with verification by the province.
    * Check that the producer is from Honghu county-level city.
    * The raw material is lotus leaf, not tea leaf.
    * Appearance — strips or granules, blue-green or light green, with a lotus aroma.

**12. Interesting Facts:**

* One plant — four indications: rhizome (洪湖莲藕), seeds (洪湖莲子), young shoots (洪湖藕带) and leaf (洪湖荷叶茶). *Keji Ribao* (2026) cites this as the main argument for the value of the brand.
* The leaf is not the lotus's only “tea” use: *Jingji Ribao* writes of a new Honghu product — coffee with lotus leaf.
* The value of the common brand “洪湖莲藕” was estimated in November 2025 at 25.86 billion yuan; only part of this figure relates to the leaf tea.
* The processing capacity for leaf tea, according to *Hubei Ribao* (2023), is 10 t a year, while *Jingji Ribao* (2025) attributes to Honghu 53% of the national market for this tea.

**13. Comparison with Other “Teas” Not from the Tea Bush:**

* **Heye, dried lotus leaf (荷叶):** The corpus's general article on dried lotus leaf without reference to a place; *Hónghú héyè chá* is a specific protected product with fixation and rolling.
* **Huangmei Heye Cha (黄梅荷叶茶):** The second protected lotus leaf tea in Hubei — from Huangmei County, a geographical indication product since 2014.
* **Guanshan Lianqiao Cha ([冠山连翘茶](https://thetea.app/article/guanshan-lianqiao-cha)):** Forsythia leaf from Shanxi, recognized by the same announcement No. 640.
* **Maoyan Meicha ([茅岩莓茶](https://thetea.app/article/maoyan-meicha)):** The vine *Ampelopsis grossedentata* from Hunan, from the same announcement.

**In Conclusion:**

*Hónghú héyè chá* is not tea but lotus leaf from the largest lake of the Jianghan Plain, processed in the tea manner: microwave fixation, three cycles of rolling and drying, “raising the aroma”. The protection requirements describe it precisely — strips or granules, a light clear liquor with a lotus aroma, norms for amino acids and flavonoids — while the history of the drink before the 1990s still rests on unverified references.