The rolling hills around the Qiandao Lake, thanks to the determined spring rains, are now coated with tea sprouts. Coupled with the kick-off of tea picking on February 28, a promotional video centering Qiandao Lake Tea and the group standards of Longjing Tea and black tea over the lake area were also unveiled. This is also the first provincial tea quality standard Zhejiang Tea Industry Association ever provided.

Chun’an, one of the oldest tea-producing areas in Zhejiang and even China, first grew tea in the Han Dynasty. The local tea business started to flourish in the Tang and Song Dynasties and came to its heyday during the Qing Dynasty. It is where the national tea plant “Jiukeng” comes from. In spring, the tea plantations now covering approximately 200,000 mu are being filled with some 80,000 farmers busy harvesting the “spring tea”. The county’s tea industry that annually yields a revenue of 3 billion yuan makes it a cash crop for the locals.

This year, to further promote the high-quality development of the tea industry and tea economy, the local authority signed with China Tea Co., Ltd. an agreement of strategic cooperation in tea culture, tea industry and tea technology. They will join hands to build model villages or plants for common prosperity, facilitate the tea branding and play the local special’s value to the fullest.   

The opening ceremony also featured an exhibition named “new tea artisans, new tea varieties and new tea products”, lending merchants, enterprises and experts a further understanding of the improved tea varieties, advanced technologies and category innovations over the past years. Many tea companies and tea cooperatives signed spring tea purchase agreements with model tea-growing villages, and female representatives from Chun’ an and Shexian (Anhui Province) also launched live-streaming sales of spring tea.

The newly produced spring tea will soon meet the public in the exhibition hall of the agricultural products of Qiandao Lake, followed by the opening of the Qiandao Lake market in early March.