Fohai in the Republican Era: The Rise of Menghai's Tea Industry

Today, when people talk about the "Menghai taste" or the Menghai Tea Factory, many tea lovers assume Menghai has always been the center of pu'er. In fact, in the Qing the heart of the tea trade was the Six Ancient Tea Mountains on the east bank of the Lancang River and Pu'er Prefecture. Menghai's real rise came in the Republican era, when it was still called "Fohai."

Where Is Fohai Today?

Fohai is today's Menghai County in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, on the west bank of the Lancang River, bordering Myanmar to the west. In the Republican era it was Fohai County; after the founding of the People's Republic it was renamed Menghai County, and the tea factory there was renamed from "Fohai Tea Factory" to "Menghai Tea Factory" along with it.

The Menghai area had always been tea country: Nannuo Mountain, Bulang Mountain, Mengsong, and Bada all have large ancient tea gardens, and the Dai, Hani, and Blang peoples have grown tea here for a long time. But in the Qing, this tea mostly had to be shipped to Pu'er and Simao to be traded first; Menghai was a producing area, not a center.

Why It Became the Center of the Tea Trade in the Republican Era

The key was a new transport route. In the Republican era, merchants opened a tea route heading west through Burma and India into Tibet, roughly:

Menghai → Kengtung → Rangoon → Calcutta → Kalimpong → Lhasa

The route used trucks, steamships, trains, and pack horses along the way. Although it took a big detour, it saved a great deal of time compared with the traditional caravan route north from Pu'er through Dali and Lijiang. Menghai sat right at the starting point, so tea merchants naturally gathered there to set up firms, buy tea, press it, and ship it out.

The change of route also spurred the rise of the tea mountains on the west bank of the Lancang: Nannuo, Nanqiao, Mengsong, Jingmai, Bulang, and Bada, which the tea world calls the "Six Tea Mountains Beyond the River." Meanwhile, the Six Ancient Tea Mountains on the east bank gradually faded to the margins. You can read about this shift in The Rise and Fall of the Six Tea Mountains.

Jincha: Tea Made for Tibetan Regions

Menghai's main product in the Republican era was "jincha" (緊茶). The usual shape is a heart with a short stem, which some say looks like a mushroom. The common view in the tea world is that this shape was easy to pack and stack, and that during long-distance transport it let air circulate between the pieces so the tea didn't spoil from trapped moisture.

Jincha's main market was Tibet and other Tibetan regions. Tibetans drink butter tea every day and needed large amounts of compressed tea that stands up to boiling and has a strong flavor, and Yunnan large-leaf sun-dried tea fit that need perfectly. Besides Menghai, Xiaguan in Dali was also an important producer of jincha and tuocha. The Kang-Zang Tea Factory, founded in Xiaguan in 1941, specialized in compressed tea for the Tibetan and Sichuan markets.

How Tea Got to Tibet and India

Before the new tea route, Yunnan tea reached Tibet mainly via the Ancient Tea Horse Road: caravans went north from Pu'er and Simao through Dali, Lijiang, and Zhongdian into Tibetan regions, a long journey that often took several months each way.

The new route went "out of the country, then back in": tea was carried by pack horse from Menghai to Kengtung in Burma, transferred to trucks to reach the railway and ports, shipped from Rangoon to Calcutta in India, taken north by train to Kalimpong, and finally carried by caravan over the Himalayas into Lhasa. Kalimpong was then the hub of Indo-Tibetan trade, and Yunnan tea changed hands to Tibetan merchants there.

Machine Tea Making Arrived at the Same Time

From the late 1930s to the early 1940s, Yunnan's tea industry began bringing in machinery. Bai Mengyu set up a tea factory on Nannuo Mountain, importing tea-making machines from Britain and bringing them into the mountains via Kengtung in Burma. It went into full production in 1941 and made Yunnan's first batch of machine-made black tea. In the same period, Fan Hejun and others founded an experimental tea factory in Fohai, the predecessor of the Menghai Tea Factory; see Fan Hejun and the Fohai Experimental Tea Factory.

War Cut Everything Short

In 1942 the war spread to Burma, Yunnan-Burma transport was disrupted, and the tea route through Burma and India was severed. Menghai's tea industry suddenly lost its export outlet. The Nannuo Mountain factory fell into disuse for a time, and the Fohai factory came to a standstill. It wasn't until the 1950s that Menghai's tea industry started up again under the state-owned factory system, and later recipes such as 7542 and 7572 were born there.

What This Period Left Behind

• Menghai became an industry center: To this day, Menghai remains one of the places with the densest concentration of pu'er factories.
• The source of the Menghai taste: Material from Bulang Mountain, Nannuo Mountain, and other mountains beyond the river shaped the strong, full-bodied Menghai style; read Menghai and Lao Banzhang.
• The starting point of industrialization: Machine tea making and the experimental factory laid the technical groundwork for the later state-owned factories.

FAQ

What is Fohai? Fohai is today's Menghai County in Xishuangbanna Prefecture, Yunnan. It was called Fohai County in the Republican era and renamed Menghai after the founding of the People's Republic.

Why did Menghai become the center of the tea trade in the Republican era? A new tea route through Burma and India into Tibet started from Menghai and was faster than the traditional caravan routes, so tea merchants and capital concentrated there, taking over Pu'er's role as trading hub.

Where was jincha sold? Mainly to Tibet and other Tibetan regions, where it was boiled for butter tea. Jincha was usually made in a heart shape with a stem, convenient for packing and long-distance transport.

How was tea shipped to Tibet back then? By pack horse from Menghai to Kengtung in Burma, by truck and ship via Rangoon to Calcutta in India, by train to Kalimpong, and then by caravan over the mountains into Lhasa.