What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

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Oct 14th, '13, 00:16
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What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

by bes » Oct 14th, '13, 00:16

I bought a tea recently that was grown in Fu'an that was labelled as a Hilson Panyong. Originally, I thought that this was a brand name. However, this tea is produced by an independent smaller scale farmer. Does anyone know whether this was an earlier name for Congou teas grown in this area, Refers to a varietal of tea, or does it simply mean that the tea is intended to be a tea produced in the style of the Hilson Group?

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Oct 14th, '13, 00:31
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Re: What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

by Poohblah » Oct 14th, '13, 00:31

bes, I don't know if this will answer your question, or if you were already aware, but "Panyong" is the name of a town in Fu'an. http://babelcarp.org/babelcarp/babelcar ... se=panyong http://babelcarp.org/babelcarp/babelcar ... se=tanyang

by the way: https://www.google.com/search?q=panyong ... annel=fflb "Panyong" seems to be the colloquial name for congou (gongfu) teas grown in the area.

Oct 14th, '13, 00:44
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Re: What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

by bes » Oct 14th, '13, 00:44

Thanks, I was aware about Panyong being a kind of generic name for Congou in that area, but I didn't know that it was a name of a place. Thanks for the links. I'm curious about the term Hilson, some places seem to be using it as a term for Tanyang, but the tea I have is not really that though the farmer does produce some but he still lists them as Hilson.

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Oct 16th, '13, 08:34
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Re: What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

by Evan Draper » Oct 16th, '13, 08:34

I found one page that I can't get to load so there's a cache of it here. Certainly doesn't explain anything but it might be more to go on for someone with a more intimate understanding of Chinese. My guess is somebody at an earlier point in history "translated" the English name "Hilson" into a couple Chinese characters, which wound up in someone's dictionary, and then later when someone wanted to translate some Chinese phrase which was used to describe this tea, they found "Hilson" waiting there for them. On that hunch, I looked up Keri Hilson in Baidu, and they sinicize her last name as 希尔森 [xī'ěrsēn] - "rare forest"?

Oct 18th, '13, 17:13
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Re: What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

by bes » Oct 18th, '13, 17:13

Thanks for the article Evan. I seems to suggest it is used in place of congou. I found another article that suggests its a Trade mark of the Fu'an Tea Association.

*there may of been a problem with the site listed so I removed the web address. See post below.
Last edited by bes on Oct 18th, '13, 19:34, edited 2 times in total.

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Oct 18th, '13, 17:35
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Re: What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

by Evan Draper » Oct 18th, '13, 17:35

That link was blocked by my admin for malware....
Last edited by Evan Draper on Oct 19th, '13, 16:34, edited 1 time in total.

Oct 18th, '13, 18:28
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Re: What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

by bes » Oct 18th, '13, 18:28

Sorry about that, my antivirus didn't catch anything. The site is basically a resource for online tea merchants, with news, company and association links, there is some ads. The gist of the article was about someone being arrested for trafficking counterfeit Hilson products and that you needed the permission of the tea association of Fu'an to use the mark. It started out with a description of Tanyang Congou.

Oct 20th, '13, 14:39
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Re: What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

by bes » Oct 20th, '13, 14:39

It seems that Hilson was an early name that Black teas from Fuan were marketed by in Europe. Now it seems that the Hilson name is being used like a geographical designation for wines etc to designate teas grown from Tan Agar Tea at certain elevations in a certain area around Fuan and processed in specific ways ( The sources I found are not a hundred percent clear as to whether it is specific to all styles of panyong or just tan yang). The best source of information I found was here:

http://www.tygf.cn/ ( the site needs to be opened through a translator) The site for A Shan Black Tea, but Hilson is not a Brand specific to a company but rather a region of production for the Tea.

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Oct 20th, '13, 17:14
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Re: What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

by Evan Draper » Oct 20th, '13, 17:14

I looked through that site a bit. Everywhere Google Translate says "Hilson," it says “坦洋工夫” [Tǎnyáng gōngfu] in Chinese. “坦洋工夫” is the trademark they talk about protecting. I don't see anything on the Chinese side that SAYS "Hilson," much less where the "Hilson" name might have come from.

Makes me think of "Hyson," which is apparently an Anglicization of 熙春 [xīchūn]. But I don't see any linguistic connection between 坦洋工夫 and Hilson. Interesting puzzle.

Oct 20th, '13, 18:17
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Re: What is meant by a Hilson Panyong?

by bes » Oct 20th, '13, 18:17

Interesting, It may be that, Hilson was simply an old name given for English speaking markets and somehow that has made it into the transaltors? It's interesting that when you look at that site under the Jinpin teas and the Tanyang teas they list them both as Hilson, and other sites have Tanyang and Panyong used together with Hilson in the English Translation http://www.fjtygf.com/cpzs.php?c_id=0&page=2

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