The fragrance of tea from Zhaoping County, Guangxi, drifts into thousands of households

Here there are 215,000 mu of primeval forest, the best-preserved and most vegetation-rich pristine natural forest area in eastern Guangxi, home to rare animals and plants such as macaques, crocodile lizards, giant salamanders and tree ferns. The excellent soil, good water quality and pleasant climate have created the most comfortable “hotbed” for the origin of local tea culture and the development of the tea industry. This is Wenzhu Town in Zhaoping County, a famous tea-growing town with a profound tea history and rich tea culture.

Wenzhu Town is located in the middle reaches of the Guijiang River, with a forestry area of 404,000 mu. It is a veritable land of mountains, forests and waters, and its rich resource advantages have provided superior conditions for local people to develop tea cultivation. At present, Wenzhu Town has five special famous teas of Guangxi: high-mountain cliff tea, cloud-mist tea, Xiangqi tea, Fuyun No. 6 and small-leaf variety, among which the wild “high-mountain cliff tea” won the “International Special Honor Gold Award” at the 1999 International Consumer Goods Expo and International Honors Awards. In 2007 it also won the highest award for Chinese agriculture at the 14th Yangling Agricultural High-Tech Expo.

Since the 1990s, Wenzhu green tea has been planted on a large scale and has gradually become a distinctive local agricultural industry. He Juan, Party Secretary of Wenzhu Town, introduced: “The Party Committee and government of Wenzhu Town have always adhered to the development positioning of ‘bamboo lush and tea fragrant, a holy land of wellness’, taking the tea industry as a pillar industry to promote farmers' income growth. By introducing tea processing factories, we have built a complete tea industry chain, while also raising the brand awareness of tea farmers and enterprises, building up the tea culture brand and boosting local economic development.”

At present, Wenzhu Town has a total of 12,000 mu of tea gardens, with 3,927 people directly engaged in tea cultivation and processing, accounting for 36.7% of the town's total population. There are 11 tea processing enterprises, and annual dry tea output has risen from 2.5 tons in the early period to more than 500 tons now, achieving an annual tea output value of more than 60 million yuan.

Zhou Shifu and Yang Yeqing, a couple from Xintian Group in Wenzhu Village, put four children through university by growing tea. More than ten years ago, by attending the tea cultivation technical training classes held at the time, the couple began growing tea. At most they grew more than 5 mu of tea, and when they had finished their own work they helped other families for wages, earning a substantial income. After all their hard work, their children have all graduated from university, and Yang Yeqing feels very gratified.

On the way to visit the Xiangqi Mountain tea garden, Zhang Gan, mayor of Wenzhu Town, pointed to the winding but flat concrete road and said: “In the past, inconvenient transportation was always a weak point restricting the development of our tea industry and the promotion of tea culture. After the concrete road was completed, we actively cooperated with tea enterprises, stepped up publicity and promotion of organic tea, advanced base construction and variety improvement, increased the added value of tea, enhanced the influence of our own tea brands, and promoted our green, pristine Wenzhu tea.”

The reporter also learned that as early as 1987, Zhaoping County's first large-scale tea processing enterprise opened in Wenzhu Town. In 1989, the “Green Tea No. 2” produced by the Xiangqi Mountain Tea Factory won third place in the Guangxi township enterprise green tea industry evaluation. In 2012, Wenzhu Town was rated as a “Famous Tea Town of Guangxi”; Xiangqi “Zhaoping Red” black tea won the title of “China Famous Brand” and a gold award at the 9th International Famous Tea Evaluation, and in 2013 it even became the designated high-end reception tea of the Consulate General of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar in Nanning.