The Maliandao Tea Market in Beijing is the largest tea market in northern China, spanning over 200 acres. It is a bustling market with six tea malls and countless boutiques and stalls. Merchants source over 100 kinds of tea and rare antique teawares. The market generates over $1 billion annually and brings together tea growers, wholesalers, retailers, and artisans in one place, delighting tea lovers.

1. 56 STiR tea & coffee industry international
Maliandao Market
A sea of tea in Beijing
Story and Photos by Si Chen

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The aroma of tea sweetens the air along Beijing’s mile-long
Mǎliándào Tea Market. The largest tea market in northern China,
Mǎliándào is a very busy street harboring six tea malls, countless
boutiques and stalls. The market covers more than 200 acres just south of
the Beijing West Railway Station, generating more than $1 billion annually.
It is an ocean of tea—tea growers, wholesalers, retailers, and teaware
artisans are all in one place, a tea lover’s dream. Merchants there are
incredibly resourceful when it comes to finding prestigious offerings—it is
common to see a 10 sq. ft. shop sourcing 100 kinds of tea, or a temoku tea
bowl from the Song dynasty, to the delight of connoisseurs.
Huayun Red Robe is a typical shop in Mǎliándào, primarily wholesaling
Bohea tea, (Yán Chá or Rock tea) from the Wuyi Mountains, which is also
home to the famous Lapsang Souchong. Store owners Yihua Luo and his
wife Zhonghong Li, have multi-roles in the tea business—they are tea
growers, retailers and wholesalers: Owning a small tea garden in Wuyi,
their hometown, the couple grow their own tea and make tea with their own
recipe every June. In Mǎliándào they both wholesale and retail, with big
boxes of tea inventory stacked inside their 160 sq. ft. (15 m2) showroom.
Bohea is a niche market in Beijing where Jasmine and oolongs are popular
but fans frequent the shops weekly providing stable revenue.
Raw (‘sheng’) pu-erh cakes (375g) from the 23 tea mountains of Yunnan province.
A designer teaware boutique
T

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Across the corridor from Huayun
you will see Nihu Zhang, or ‘Clay
Pot Zhang’ (‘Zhang’ is the owner’s
surname). Zhang is a Zisha (‘purple
clay’) tea pot artisan with a national
reputation for his craftsmanship.
You often find the master sitting in a
corner shaping a tea pot or carving
beautiful calligraphy in the clay by
hand. It takes months to make one
Zisha tea pot. Zhang’s best works
sell for $10,000. Works by his
apprentices and students are a
bargain, selling for less than $100.
Nan Cui, a Chinese tea connois-
seur and business consultant with
Fusion Pacific Ltd. in Winnipeg,
Canada, explains the difference in
the Chinese and Western tea trade:
“In China the tea industry is less
standardized compared to the
Western mass production model,
where production, wholesale and
retail are clear-cut and divided
among industry players.”
The beautifully decorated paifang is a
prominent landmark of Mǎliándào Tea
market, resembling the Chinese gate at
Washington D.C.’s Chinatown.
Hybrid business model – wholesale packages inside a retail shop, which is the
norm in Cha Yuan, one of the most popular tea malls in Mǎliándào
Owner Zhonghong Li posing in front of their stock at Huayun Red Robe in Cha
Yuan Market.
Artsy tea shops displaying tea cakes
and sets from Yunnan province

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“The Chinese tea industry has its roots in traditional
agriculture,” he explains. “Tea plants are grown in
almost every county in Southern China, and in the past
Chinese people mostly drank locally-produced teas.
Although trading tea within the country dates back
more than a thousand years, it is only since market
reforms 30 years ago that China has seen the boom of
mass production and trading of tea,” he said.
“In Beijing for example, local residents once drank
only jasmine tea. In the past two decades, successful
marketing and branding by large companies has
changed the market, and nowadays Tieguanyin Oolong
and Pu-erh are the most popular teas,” said Cui.
Birdseye view of Mǎliándào street showing about 1/3 of the
whole market
Xiao Xiong, staff at Huayun Red Robe, is packing a kilo of
Bohea tea into single-brew packets.
A tea-set outlet