• From: Philadelphia
  • Registered: 2010-09-22
  • Posts: 15

Topic: Congou - What exactly does it mean?

Can anyone shed light on what the term "Congou" means?  Babelcarp explains that Congou is synonymous with Hongcha(红茶 or 紅茶), red tea, what westerners call "black tea", and that it's a corruption of Gong Fu.  Upton Tea Imports also uses the term in this way, in their catalogue and articles.

However, I've seen other sources which refer to congou as being a specific type or grade of Chinese red tea.  Some sources on the net, which I would not necessarily trust as reliable, say it refers to a specific grade of tea produced by only the fifth leaf from the top of a shoot of the tea plant.

Then, I see specific teas such as Panyang Congou as well, and I've found conflicting information about them...including claims that Panyang Congou is always a tea that does not contain tips, and then other sources selling tea labelled by this name that clearly is a tippy tea.  Again, according to Babelcarp, I found that Panyang refers to Tanyang(坦洋), in Ningde county in Fujian.  But...not much more detail and no authoritative sources to clear this up.

Any clarifying information would be greatly appreciated.

cazort's Website

  • From: Los Angeles, CA
  • Registered: 2008-10-29
  • Posts: 258

Re: Congou - What exactly does it mean?

Congou is for 工夫 (gongfu). I believe the name became common in English based on a romanization of the way that the word is pronounced in one of the Min dialects, probably the Xiamen (廈門) dialect, since this was the port that a lot of Fujianese tea traded out of. Babelcarp, correctly, points out that the name comes from 'gongfu', though I would argue it's not a "corruption" of gongfu any more than 'gongfu' - in fact, it's probably a closer approximation of the pronunciation of the word in the area where the tea is originally from.

Gongfu red (black) tea is the name for one type of red tea. I believe it's so-named because of its shape, and because of the skill / effort required to make it, rather than because it's suitable for brewing "gongfu" style, but I could be wrong about that. So in some cases, you might just use 'congou' to describe that type of red tea.

  • From: Philadelphia
  • Registered: 2010-09-22
  • Posts: 15

Re: Congou - What exactly does it mean?

Thanks, this makes sense.

Do you know, or have any sources that can explain what distinguishes gongfu / congou red tea from other red teas, and which teas would be classified in this category, and which would not?

cazort's Website

  • Registered: 2009-01-03
  • Posts: 48

Re: Congou - What exactly does it mean?

cazort wrote:

Thanks, this makes sense.

Do you know, or have any sources that can explain what distinguishes gongfu / congou red tea from other red teas, and which teas would be classified in this category, and which would not?

Nowadays, I don't think gongfu is a practical concept for classification. But in Gong Zhi's China Red Tea, he explained the origin of the term gongfu. After some refinement of tea processing procedure, people started to call the tea processed with the better procedure "gongfu red tea", and gongfu basically means a lot of good work. Later, tea processing more and more converged to the best practice, and gongfu is more of an advertising term meaning "good tea".

門前塵土三千丈，不到薰爐茗碗旁