Chongqing - The tea-picking activity began in Tuanlin Village, Tongliang District of Chongqing, around the Qingming Festival falling on April 5 this year. Local villagers harvested all the fresh leaves that have started to sprout since the advent of Spring.
Han Shoucheng, a tea farmer, harvested over 100 kilograms of fresh tea leaves. About 1,300 square meters area of white tea trees brings nearly 100,000 yuan ($14,523) of income, which is considerable for him. It makes Han wholeheartedly focus on the tea garden.
White tea is made from the youngest leaves and buds of the Camellia sinensis plant. It is minimally processed, with the leaves being withered and dried naturally in the sun or indoors. (Photo/Canva)
At Tuanlin Village, white tea trees have a long history dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Han remembers that many tea trees have been scattered on the mountain near the village since he was a child. The tea trees were generally two to three meters high, with the tallest reaching over five meters.
"At that time, we didn't pick tea leaves but used bamboo poles to tap the tea trees to let the leaves fall," said Han. Yang Xiaoping, Party Branch Secretary of Tuanlin Village, remembers that in the 1990s, a pound of white tea could sell for more than 1,000 yuan because of its limited output.
Later, a villager transplanted several white tea trees from the mountain. Although only one tea tree survived, it let him see the feasibility of the transplant.
In 2015, Han joined the tea transplanting. He learned that to successfully plant white tea trees at the mountain, two problems needed to be solved: the low survival rate and the overhigh tea tree plants.
If the tree is too tall, it is not convenient for picking. After consulting experts, Han began to apply rooting powder during transplantation to improve the survival rate of tea trees. He also pruned the branches extensively, controlled the growth, trying to nurture the tea trees into what they wanted. Han's exploration significantly increased the success rate of transplanting tea trees.
In 2016, everyone started to plant tea trees. Through methods such as cutting and insertion, the planting area quickly expanded. As a traditional mining area, Tuanlin Village further developed the size of tea tree planting by combining mine ecological restoration.
The village's white tea area has now developed to about 600,000 square meters. The tea is sold in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other places.
Living in the countryside, the villagers know about the competitive domestic tea market. "The technics were rough once, and we only produced dried tea flakes. Now, consumers demand higher quality, so if we don't improve the technology, the tea will not sell well," Han said. Therefore, the tea farmers, including him, began to explore the processing technology of bud tea.
Yang revealed that in the tea garden of the village, ordinary farmers could produce 20 pounds of dried tea per mu (about 667 square meters), with a selling price between 400 and 600 yuan per pound, and the income per mu can reach about 10,000 yuan.
Those who manage particularly well, like Han, can earn up to 50,000 yuan per mu. This year, the entire village is expected to produce more than 3 tons of dry tea, valued at about 2.5 million yuan.