Kang County Clay Jar Tea 康县罐罐茶
Kang County Clay Jar Tea is featured among the local specialties of Gansu.
Kang County Clay Jar Tea (康县罐罐茶) is the pot-boiled tea of Kang County (康县) in Longnan (陇南), Gansu, where tea leaves are simmered with salt and spices, thickened with roasted wheat flour and topped with egg, tofu, potato, dough twists, walnuts and pork cracklings.
How it is made
Jar tea (罐罐茶) is not a kind of tea leaf but a custom named after the small jar the tea is boiled in, and a Gansu Daily (甘肃日报) feature describes the way Kang County drinks it as fairly elaborate. People in the countryside used to boil it in small black clay jars and later moved to larger vessels.
In central and northern Kang County the favoured style is called 'three storeys' (三层楼). Cold water goes into the jar first. Just before it boils, tea leaves, salt, Sichuan pepper, fennel and spring-onion roots are added in turn and brought to the boil, then wheat flour roasted in advance is stirred in. The tea is poured into a bowl and finished with strips of fried egg pancake, diced tofu, diced potato, small fried dough twists, walnut kernels and cracklings left over from rendering lard.
The feature's writer drank it twice: once at a farmhouse in Anmenkou (岸门口), boiled in a jar, and once on a street in the county town, where it was cooked in a wok. The writer judged the wok version not as good as the jar tea but still full of ingredients.
Flavour and texture
Kang County Clay Jar Tea is both food and drink, though mainly drink, with a rich aroma and flavours that sit well together. The three storeys describe the bowl itself: egg strips, chopped spring onion, dough twists and cracklings float in the upper part, walnut kernels hang in the middle, and the tofu and potato sink to the bottom. The layers are not sharply divided and sometimes mix.
Where it comes from
Jar tea is an old custom of the countryside in north-west China and is especially popular around Tianshui (天水), Dingxi (定西) and Longnan. Kang and Liangdang (两当) counties in Longnan and Lueyang (略阳) in southern Shaanxi belong to two provinces but lie in the same ecological zone, and their jar-tea customs are broadly alike, differing in how elaborate the steps are and how many ingredients go in. The black clay jars used there are much larger than the small black clay jars used in Tianshui, which are no bigger than a hand can hold.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-23. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.