Chinese tea companies need not imitate the Lipton model

Why does China's tea industry always fall into the trap of comparing itself with “Lipton”? The reason is that Chinese tea companies have no brand leading the world tea industry. But Eastern and Western tea-drinking cultures and customs differ, and Chinese tea and “Lipton” are not comparable at all. There are many reasons for this:

First, “Lipton” follows an industrialized model, with mechanized picking and unified standards for production for the global market; Chinese tea (especially famous and premium teas) follows a non-industrialized model, with hand picking, and the six major tea categories each have intricate production standards set by national, industry, local and enterprise bodies, which are hard to unify and impossible to unify.

Second, there is a difference between “drinking” and “savoring” when it comes to “Lipton” and Chinese famous and premium teas. The former merely stays at the concept of “drinking” (purely to quench thirst); the latter, besides having the former's “drinking” function, has long crossed the threshold of “savoring”——valuing “savoring” culture, pursuing a spiritual need through the process of savoring a cup (or pot) of tea.

Chinese people savoring tea pay attention to “color, aroma, taste and shape”, and have their own appraisal standards for the tea liquor, tea aroma, tea taste and tea shape. Even for the aroma type of the same tea, they still need to compare which mountain it comes from, how old the trees are, and who made it; even the brewed leaves must be appraised as whole leaf, half leaf, broken leaf and bud type. It can be said that the Chinese tea-savoring system is vast and complex, beyond comparison with “Lipton”.

Third, Chinese people not only care about savoring tea, but also about “tea competitions” (ming zhan). For the same single-variety tea, different picking seasons and different people's production methods allow “competing on color and foam” and “brewing the new and competing on hardness, demanding the tea stick to the cup rim”. In addition, appraising water, admiring pots and using cups are all extremely particular. But “Lipton” is only a single beverage; all teas use the same standard, so it cannot be used for “competition”, nor can it be, let alone the tea-culture realm of appraising water, admiring pots and using cups.

Fourth, the diversification of Chinese tea products, the diversification of production techniques, the diversification of tea-drinking methods and the diversity of regional cultures mean that individuals' different consumption pays great attention to and stresses the cultural mood of savoring tea, including cultivating the mind and nourishing the mind through tea; “Lipton” is not comparable.

Chinese tea has a unique cultural heritage, and unique tea-opening ceremonies (tea-picking festivals or tea-opening festivals) are often held before Qingming according to different folk customs. Various places also hold tea “evaluation meetings” and “tasting meetings” every year, with tea art performances and so on, and they advance with the times as the eras change. Chinese tea art represents a more humanized, life-oriented and artistic way of savoring tea unique to Chinese people. At least to this day, “Lipton” does not possess this kind of cultural accomplishment. Due to the cultural differences between China and the West and different historical backgrounds, Westerners drinking tea cannot pursue color, aroma, taste and shape and a poetic realm the way Chinese people do, nor can they pursue the natural and formal beauty of tea leaves.

We admit that as a single tea beverage, there is no doubt that “Lipton” is strong; as China's diverse tea-savoring culture, China's regional public brands are also the strongest in the world. Can China's tea industry stop agonizing over “becoming bigger and stronger”, and instead make good use of regional public brands to make products better, strengthen the protection of ecology, the environment and historical and cultural heritage, achieve “regional intensive cultivation”, and integrate tea-culture tourism into large and small circular agriculture systems.