Design Origins: Whispering Earth, a Community Curated Ripe Pu Erh Tea Cake
We’re excited to share the packaging design for our Lincang ripe pu erh tea cake, Whispering Earth. This artwork is built as a visual journey, translating the tea’s layered flavors and aged character into an immersive scene.
A Tea-Themed Ancient Town
Our goal was to convert the tea’s color, aroma, and aged depth into tangible imagery. The result is an illustrated “tea-themed ancient town” that blends natural, architectural, and cultural motifs inspired by traditional Chinese landscapes. The scene draws from the Old Town of Lijiang in northern Yunnan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of China’s best-preserved ancient cities.
At the center rises the iconic Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Just below it are the city’s well-known symbols, the Moon Embracing Pavilion and the Black Dragon Pool, where the mountain’s reflection completes the view. Together, these elements express the interplay between culture and nature. They remind us that tea production isn’t just agriculture, but a cultural craft shaped by human knowledge and the wild landscape it comes from.
The Flavors Behind the Design
This Lincang ripe pu erh stands out for its deep taste, mellow smoothness, and balanced medium fermentation. Its profile leans mild and harmonious, with a clear aged note and a complex aroma that hints at fruits, herbs, camphor, cocoa, licorice, mint, earthiness, and woodiness.
To bring these sensations into the artwork, we placed plants representing several key flavor notes in the foreground of the painting on the right, including cocoa, licorice, and mint. They anchor the visual story in the tea’s aroma and taste. The name Whispering Earth itself reflects both the tea’s grounding character and the terroir that shapes this unique complex taste.
Whispering Earth Printmaking
The design was created by artist Su Yi, the same artist who designed our previous tea cakes, Moon Garden white tea, Amber Sunrise black tea, and Velvet Mountain purple tea. While for the last designs we chose the traditional ink wash technique (水墨画, Shui Mo Hua), for Whispering Earth, we want something different. Something that could effectively express the link between this ripe pu erh and the earth, and could evoke a grounding, solemn feeling.
With Su Yi, we decided to use another traditional Chinese technique: the printmaking technique (版画 Banhua). In particular, for the Whispering Earth design label, she reinterpreted the traditional Chinese woodblock printing through a modern lens. The brown and black color palette is another ocular choice for enhancing the painting, as well as another reference to the ripe pu erh within the wrapping paper. To complete the piece, Su Yi’s red seal appears on the left. In China, this stamp serves as an artist’s signature, marking the work as authentically their own.
Making the Tea Visible
Whispering Earth brings together tea, origin, and craftsmanship in a direct and grounded way. From Lincang’s mellow, well-aged profile to the ancient town of Li Jiang and printmaking, every element of the design is chosen to reflect this ripe pu erh and its origins.
The design serves as a visual extension of the tea. Its details unfold gradually, similar to how the tea reveals its flavors with each successive infusion. Together, the painting and the tea create a calm experience that is grounded in place, material, and time.