Congou
Chinese black tea
Congou (Chinese: 工夫紅茶; pinyin: gōngfu hóngchá) is a description of a black Chinese tea variety used by 19th-century tea importers in America and Europe. It was the base of the 19th-century English Breakfast tea blend.
01Name
The etymology of the tea is the same as kung fu, from the Chinese for "skill" (工夫; gongfu), via the Hokkien pronunciation kang-hu. This is the same word as in the Gongfu tea ceremony (工夫茶, sometimes 功夫茶), and congou is locally drunk in this style.
The popular variety Panyang Congou (or Panyong Congou) is a corruption of Tanyang (Chinese: 坦洋; pinyin: tǎnyáng), the name of a small village in Fu'an, Fujian that popularized the style. Once the most expensive style of black tea in the West, with exports to over twenty countries and a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, a state-owned factory established in 1958 continues to produce small amounts.
02Identification
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Congou”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- A tea plantation in China; workers tread down congou tea int Wellcome V0019200.jpg by Unknown author, CC BY 4.0
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