Qianliang Tea

Qianliang cha (千两茶), usually translated “thousand-tael tea,” is the best-known member of the Huajuan cha (花卷茶) family from Anhua County, Hunan. It’s pressed into a tall cylinder — a shape unlike anything else in Chinese tea — and it has its own national standard, GB/T 32719.2-2016.

The documented specification is roughly 1.55m tall and about 36.25kg, a genuinely striking format. Unlike many Chinese teas, Huajuan cha isn’t divided into grades under the national standard — there’s no “Special Grade” or “Grade 1” tier to check a piece against.

What actually sets it apart. Like other dark teas, Qianliang goes through wo dui (渥堆), the piling post-fermentation step. What’s distinctive is what happens after pressing: the standard describes the aging process as 日晒夜露 — “sun by day, dew by night.” Most other dark teas, including Fu Brick and Liubao, are aged indoors; Qianliang’s aging is documented as an outdoor process.

Anhua Qianliang also carries its own geographical-indication standard, DB43/T 657.2-2021, which replaced an earlier 2010 version. The update added new sizes (including larger and smaller variants beyond the classic “thousand-tael” format), raised the water-extract requirement from 23% to 24%, removed an old allowance for non-tea foreign matter, and extended the standard sample-retention period from three years to five.

Golden flowers: sometimes, not always. This is the detail most worth getting right before buying. Golden flowers (金花) — officially Eurotium cristatum (冠突散囊菌) in the standards — are documented very differently across dark tea products:

• Fu Brick tea: must have it, per GB/T 9833.3-2013.
• Qianliang / Huajuan cha: documented as “部分有” — some pieces have it, some don’t. Neither standard requires it.
• Liubao, Xiangjian, Qionglai dark tea, and both raw and ripe pu’er: the standards don’t require it at all.

So the common claim that all dark tea has golden flowers isn’t correct — Fu Brick is the only product in this comparison where it’s mandatory. The microbial count figure that does appear in the standards (≥20×10⁴ CFU/g) is specifically the Fu Brick requirement; no equivalent count is documented for Qianliang. And even where a count is set, it’s a minimum only — no maximum, and nothing in the standard says more golden flower means better tea. Treat a heavily “flowered” piece as one possible outcome, not a certified grade.

A fungal-floral aroma (菌花香) associated with golden flower is documented for Qianliang, alongside a pine-smoke note (松烟香) shared with Xiangjian tea. Amber liquor color is noted for aged pieces, though that particular term traces to a tea-ceremony standard rather than the product standard itself.

See Tianjian for a loose, lightly-pressed Anhua dark tea from the same family, and Fu Brick for the one dark tea where golden flower actually is required.

Look · Dry leaf

A compressed dark tea pressed into a long cylindrical form — a shape unlike any other Chinese tea. The documented specification is roughly 1.55m tall and about 36.25kg, though this is the standard's reference figure, not a guarantee for every piece sold.

Smell & taste

Typical aroma: fungal-floral, pine smoke. Flavor tendencies: full, rich. Body: full. These vary by batch, storage and brewing.

Brew · A starting point

Try 5 g in 150 ml water at 95–100°C for 15–30 seconds. Fully decant before tasting.

Read the wet leaves

Not documented in detail in the source material reviewed for this page.

Sources & review status

• 中国黑茶标准研究资料库（ChinaTea101_Dark_Tea_Research_Master_File）.md — Sections 1 (standard list), 3.1 (Anhua dark tea family table), 5.1-5.4 (golden flower), 7.1-7.5 (sensory dictionary), 8.1-8.3 (physicochemical comparison) — ChinaTea101 owner-supplied Source Library. Research and structured extraction performed by SCNet DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-Event, reviewed and fact-checked by Claude before publishing. Used for the GB/T 32719.2-2016 and DB43/T 657.2-2021 profiles, the distinctive outdoor "sun by day, dew by night" aging step, the no-grade-tiers confirmation, physicochemical limits (water extract ≥24.0%, above the general compressed-dark-tea baseline of ≥22.0% in GB/T 32719.1-2016), and — most importantly — the full golden-flower comparison table across dark tea products, explicitly correcting the common claim that all dark tea has golden flowers and the claim that more golden flower means better quality, neither of which the standards support. No health or wellness claims were present in the source and none are made here.

Imported from 中国黑茶标准研究资料库（ChinaTea101_Dark_Tea_Research_Master_File）.md. Updated 2026-09-25. Last reviewed 2026-09-25