Plate 19. This basket contains the famous Luk Ön tea (**) from Anwhei province. It comes packed with many others in a larger basket of the same material and is being exported in this packaging format at the present time. Each package contains a few red and white papers praising or advertising the product, and all seem to date from the late Ching. The firm must have retained the woodblocks, and a great stock of the printed papers, for the practice to persist for so long, and across decades of political and ideological change.
Plate 20. One of the papers included in the basket of Luk On tea is an undated woodblock printing on red paper, advertising the product. This is an old practice. A former editor of the famous North China Herald wrote in the 1860s: "An English merchant, opening a chest of tea of superior quality, which he has just received from China, frequently finds a little red-coloured paper inside.... These are the hand-bills issued by his brother tea-merchant in China recommending his articles". Samuel Mossman China: A Brief Account of the Country, Its Inhabitants, and their Institutions (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, c1865) p. 306. See also 195-199.