In the misty mountains of East China”s Fujian province, freshly picked tea leaves in late April as soon as once more transfer by the arms of tea makers alongside a rising wave of technological innovation.
At the Yanzike ecological tea backyard in Wuyishan, a county-level metropolis in Fujian, tea farmers converse of biodiversity, carbon sequestration and soil enchancment with the identical familiarity as soon as reserved solely for roasting temperatures and harvest timing. Nearby, guests wander by tea terraces which have advanced into public leisure areas, pausing beside streams to brew cups of Wuyi rock tea.
For Fang Zhou, a Wuyishan tea producer, who returned to his hometown in 2016 after finding out huge knowledge and mathematical modeling within the United Kingdom, such scenes mirror a profound transformation underway in China’s tea industry.
“Technology and tradition are not opposites. Today’s technology will become tomorrow’s tradition,” Fang stated.
That transformation has accelerated since March 2021, when President Xi Jinping visited the Yanzike tea backyard throughout an inspection tour of Fujian.
Xi noticed spring tea manufacturing and realized about ecological cultivation practices guided by native science and expertise commissioners — specialists who’re a part of a nationwide system that sends technical professionals to rural areas.
He urged native officers and tea producers to advertise tea tradition, develop the tea industry and apply expertise to the sector, whereas additionally emphasizing the significance of advancing the sci-tech commissioner system, in order that specialists might higher serve rural improvement.
Xi’s remarks have since turn into an vital information for lots of China’s tea-producing areas, the place efforts are more and more centered not solely on rising tea, but in addition on integrating ecological safety, technological innovation and cultural revitalization right into a broader rural improvement technique.
Following Xi’s go to, national-level help for tea improvement has continued to strengthen. In September 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, along with the State Administration for Market Regulation and the All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, issued the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Healthy Development of the Tea Industry.
The coverage outlined targets to be achieved by the tip of 2025, together with stabilizing tea plantation areas, boosting the contribution of science and expertise to tea manufacturing, increasing processed tea output and cultivating main enterprises.
In February 2026, 5 authorities departments, together with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, collectively issued tips calling for the upgrading of your complete tea industry chain and the cultivation of large-scale specialty tea industry clusters. The doc set a goal of increasing China’s tea industry chain to 1.5 trillion yuan ($221 billion) by 2030.
Xi’s reference to tea traces again to his years of working in Fujian, the place he held native and provincial management roles, and supported the modernization and branding of Fujian’s tea industry.
For Fang, the Wuyishan tea producer, Xi’s remarks in 2021 helped to make clear a improvement path he had already begun exploring. After getting back from the UK, Fang started experimenting with making use of huge knowledge and clever programs to conventional Wuyi rock tea manufacturing. Working with analysis establishments, his staff explored tea-picking machines, clever charcoal-roasting programs, and automatic tea-processing applied sciences.
In addition to revolutionizing manufacturing, the tea gardens within the space changed into well-liked locations for vacationers. At the Xiqiu Dapingzhou ecological tea plantation, greater than 60 hectares have been partially opened to the general public freed from cost. Visitors can host picnics, arrange camps, learn, go biking, or take part in tea-picking and tea-making experiences.
Fang sees the shift as a part of a broader transition in China’s tea economic system, the place plantations help tourism, sports activities, cultural occasions and outside life.
The Yanzike ecological tea backyard owes its transformation largely to groups of tea researchers and sci-tech commissioners, who helped translate Xi’s guidance into apply.
Among them is Xu Maoxing, a veteran tea skilled from Wuyishan, who has spent greater than 26 years working instantly with farmers. “If farmers didn’t understand new methods, we built demonstration tea gardens and showed them what the results could be,” Xu stated.
Under the guidance of researchers like him, Yanzike adopted inexperienced fertilization, organic pest management and intercropping programs, which collectively lowered pesticide use whereas bettering biodiversity. That ecological mannequin unfold quickly throughout Wuyishan. More than 9,000 hectares of such tea gardens have now been established within the space, with tea farmers’ incomes hovering greater than 30 % and premium tea charges growing 20 %, Xu stated.
In 2022, conventional tea processing methods and related practices in China had been inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, highlighting the enduring cultural significance of tea each in China and world wide.
Shi Chengyu, president of a Beijing-based chamber of commerce devoted to Fuding white tea, a sun-withered selection prized for its refined class and long-term ageing potential, calls this worldwide recognition a mirrored image of the sector’s dramatic evolution over the previous 20 years.
“In the early years, almost nobody in Beijing wanted to sell Fuding white tea, but now some aged white teas are nearly impossible to obtain due to strong demand,” he stated.
Shi stated he believes the framework proposed by Xi for integrating the tea industry, tradition and expertise has basically reshaped the sector. “Tea culture provides emotional identity, tea technology rebuilds trust and the tea industry creates scale,” he added.