Tea infuses vitality in farming villages

In late January, Qin Yulian was busy packaging tea bags filled with dried, frost-white leaves at a processing workshop run by Zhangjiajie Nongfu Tea Industry in Hunan province. Weeks ahead of the Spring Festival holiday, orders for vine tea, or Ampelopsis grossedentata, surged as the local specialty emerged as a popular festive gift among shoppers.

Qin, 58, from the mountainous Luotaping township, is among the farmers whose lives have been transformed by the once-overlooked plant. Long regarded as a folk remedy hidden deep in the mountains, vine tea has been developed into a pillar industry, driving high-quality rural development and helping prevent households from slipping back into poverty.

"I used to rely entirely on my husband's migrant work to support the family," Qin said. "Now I work here and earn 10,000 yuan ($1,446) a year."

Vine tea differs from green and black tea made from the traditional tea plant, or Camellia sinensis. Its leaves appear coated in a white frost — crystallized flavonoids — and contain flavonoid levels as high as 56.2 percent. The vine tea plant has long been valued in traditional Chinese medicine for soothing sore throats and protecting the liver.

For years, however, its economic potential went untapped.

"We have picked this tea in the mountains for generations, but back then you would be lucky to make 15 yuan a day," said Chen Mingxiang, 75, a farmer from Changshou village in the Luotaping township.

In 2016, local authorities identified vine tea as a strategic industry for poverty alleviation efforts, citing the area's suitable altitude and quartz sandstone soil, which favor slow growth and nutrient accumulation. Subsidies of 7,500 yuan per hectare were introduced to encourage cultivation, along with efforts to standardize production.

To ensure farmers benefit directly from the industry, companies have integrated growers into the production chain and expanded related agricultural tourism.

Zhu Wanzhang, manager of Zhangjiajie Changshouteng Health Industry, said the company has contracts with 87 households in Changshou village and purchases leaves at 4 to 8 yuan per kilogram above market prices. The arrangement guarantees farmers more than 75,000 yuan per hectare in annual income.

"We collect tea twice a day to solve the problem of keeping leaves fresh," Zhu said.

"Now that the industry has taken off, both prices and quality are on a different level, and our incomes have risen," Chen said. He added that his village has become one of the communities with the highest savings deposits at the Zhangjiajie Rural Commercial Bank.

The sector's rapid growth has drawn returning entrepreneurs who are blending modern technology with traditional practices.

Zhou Zhaoxiong, a native of Taiping village, previously worked as a migrant laborer in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and later operated a mine. Motivated by China's push for green development, he returned home to establish Nongfu Tea Industry.

"The township now generates an output value of several hundred million yuan and has undergone a remarkable transformation," Zhou said.

At his factory, freshly harvested leaves move through automated production lines equipped with electrostatic cleaning, controlled fermentation and a six-layer withering system capable of processing 4,000 kg of fresh leaves a day.

"These precise controls maximize flavonoid retention," Zhou said. His facility processes harvests from nearly 470 hectares of surrounding farmland, standardizing what was once a scattered, home-based product.

In Yongding district of Zhangjiajie, the vine tea industry has increased incomes for more than 49,000 farming households and provided jobs for 90,000 rural residents, lifting average annual incomes by over 6,000 yuan, according to local authorities.

In neighboring Yongshun county, Dafeng Ecological Agriculture Development has established more than 260 hectares of vine tea bases and helped 15 village collectives cultivate an additional 1,000 hectares.

Through livestreaming and partnerships with e-commerce platforms and retailers such as East Buy and Pangdonglai, the company can sell up to 800,000 yuan worth of tea in a three-hour livestream, said Wang Shaofu, the company's chairman. It generated more than 3 million yuan in sales through livestreaming e-commerce last year, he added.

The company is also extending the value chain into deep-processed products, including health supplements.

"The industry cannot stop at just a cup of tea," Wang said. "We are targeting the 'big health' sector by expanding from traditional tea to extracts, herbal medicine slices and skin care products."