Old tea plantation gets new vitality, and the "one-man commander" played an indispensable role

The cooperative introduced quite a lot of tea processing equipment and achieved mechanized production. In the photo, Long Guosheng is inspecting the tea processing.

This old tea garden on the hillside is Long Guosheng's treasure.

In order to keep the old tea plantation from falling into neglect after production stopped following restructuring, Long Guosheng of Wutong Town, Lingui District, stayed on and became the tea plantation's "one-man commander." Through his own efforts, he not only preserved some of the old tea trees on the plantation, but also developed new varieties and motivated nearby villagers to grow tea together, gradually bringing new vitality back to the old tea plantation.

From plantation director to "one-man commander"

As spring returns and all things revive, the warm, moist spring air is most suitable for tea growth. Recently, a reporter came to a tea-picking plantation in Wutong Town, Lingui District, where dozens of workers were busy picking tea. The tea-picking plantation was lush green everywhere and the air was fresh. Long Guosheng, the person in charge of the tea plantation, took the reporter on a long tour around the plantation, introducing tea tree varieties such as old-tree tea, green maocha, big-leaf tea and Anji white tea from time to time, speaking of them as if counting his family treasures. This middle-aged man, around 40 years old, was every bit the tea expert.

It is understood that Long Guosheng was then the director of the state-owned Wutong Tea Plantation. In the office, Long Guosheng showed the reporter a wooden plaque. On the mottled wooden plaque were black characters on a white background in traditional Chinese, reading "State-owned Lingui County Wutong Tea Plantation." The plaque was very old and looked like it had seen many years, but it was very clean, and the writing on it was still clear. It was obvious that its owner had kept it very well.

According to the "Lingui County Gazetteer," Wutong Tea Plantation was formerly Lingui's main tea-producing base, with more than 300 mu planted with tea trees. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Qingming and Guyu teas produced by the tea plantation were quite famous and were sold far away to major domestic cities and to regions such as Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, China.

Long Guosheng said that due to the impact of the market economy, plus many other factors, the state-owned Wutong Tea Plantation could no longer continue, and in 2009 it was forced to undergo restructuring and stop production. The employees of the tea plantation accepted the restructuring and reassignment and left reluctantly. Long Guosheng, who had just become the tea plantation's director not long before, also faced the choice of whether to stay or go.

Long Guosheng said he had a special feeling for tea, and when he was in university he chose the tea major. After graduation, he learned that many of his fellow students had stayed in the cities to make their way, and many had already achieved some success. Some were in the tea business as entrepreneurs, and some had become senior tea masters. The outside world still held no small temptation for him. But when faced with the tea plantation, he was unwilling to give up. After a mental struggle over whether to leave or stay, Long Guosheng ultimately chose to remain and became the tea plantation's "one-man director."

Motivating dozens of village households to grow tea

At the tea plantation, the reporter saw a small tea garden of five or six mu that stood out from the rest. The other tea trees had all been newly planted later, but this patch of tea trees had been planted back when the state-owned Wutong Tea Plantation was in operation and had already grown for several decades. Long Guosheng said these tea trees were all his treasures, and he wanted to "take good care" of this patch of old tea trees. Long Guosheng said: "For us in Lingui, Wutong Tea Plantation should be a kind of cultural inheritance, and we cannot let it be lost. Our scale does not have to be that large, but we must preserve them."

After the tea plantation was restructured, wages were no longer paid, so he had to find a way out on his own. After nearly a year of planning, in 2010, the "one-man director" Long Guosheng mobilized several nearby tea farming households to form a tea cooperative. Relying on the professional knowledge he had learned, Long Guosheng cultivated a batch of high-quality local wild tea himself, and also introduced varieties such as Anji white tea and Fuyun No. 6. The old-tree black tea, wild black tea and osmanthus tea series he successively developed and launched were quite favored by the market.

Today, Long Guosheng's tea cooperative has begun to take shape, with more than 200 mu of tea trees and an annual output value of more than 500,000 yuan. It has also motivated more than 20 nearby farming households to plant tea together. The tea plantation supplies tea merchants in Zhejiang and other places year-round, and has also provided stable employment for more than 50 local left-behind women.

Long Guosheng has his own direct-sales tea shop in the urban area of Guilin, but he is very optimistic about today's online marketing. He plans to further expand the market through online sales next year, and at the same time expand the production scale of tea products, attract more tea farmers to join his team, and let everyone grow tea trees and pick tea together and get rich together.