A new analytical method was developed for determination synthetic pigment in red tea with rouge yellow, lemon yellow and sunset yellow by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Polyamide power was used as absorbent after the samples were soaked by distilled water, filtered,washed to neutral, and then desorbed using ethanol/ammonia/water (volume ratio7∶2∶1) mixed solvent. After metering volume, the stripping liquid with gradient elution of methanol and ammonium acetate solution were determined by UV detector at 254 nm. The results showed that the retention time of lemon yellow, rouge yellow and sunset yellow was 2.37, 5.48 and 6.88 min respectively, and the linear correlation coefficient was 0.999, 0.994 and 0.999 accordingly. Furthermore, the overy test showed that the recovery rate ranged from 86.9% to 100.4%, and RSD from 2.7 to 3.9. Resultingly, a quick and simple detection approach of the pigments in red tea was developed in the present study.