Once a niche product reserved for border trade, Chinese dark tea is now making another long and bumpy journey toward new-style beverage shops, which are the darling of the young sipping class.
Dark tea, or fermented tea, has a long history of being compressed into tea cakes and carried on horseback to northwestern hinderlands and foreign countries, winning it the sobriquet “border tea” or “export tea.”
As the fashion of new-style tea brews swept across China, dark tea found new clients in big cities: the many bubble tea shops vying for the hearts of young urbanites with innovative recipes. In Changsha, the glitzy capital of Hunan, tea shops mix dark tea with light cream and pecans and advertise its health-enhancing effects, such as lowering cholesterol levels…
