In late October, a batch of Guzhang Maojian tea and Guzhang black tea, with a total value of 10 million CNY, was packed and shipped to Russia, marking the first-ever self-operated export of a tea brand from Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. 

Guzhang is home to 205,000 mu (about 13,667 hectares) of tea plantations, ranking first in the province in per capita tea plantation area. In the county, 70% of the agricultural population is engaged in the tea industry, 80% of agricultural income comes from tea, and 90% of villages grow tea. From January to September this year, Guzhang's total tea output reached 9,285.6 tonnes, with a comprehensive output value of 2.22 billion CNY, up 9.5% and 8.58% year on year respectively. The tea industry is accelerating its shift from scale expansion to quality and efficiency enhancement.
  
In Guzhang County, green ecological tea gardens stretch in rolling waves. With the support of research teams led by Liu Zhonghua and Chen Zongmao, both academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), Guzhang has carried out pest prevention and control in green, ecological ways. With 52,000 mu (about 3,467 hectares) of its tea plantations certified as green and organic, Guzhang is acclaimed as Hunan's first "Hometown of Organic Tea in China." At the same time, cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things, blockchain, and artificial intelligence have been introduced to build five smart tea gardens including Niujiaoshan and the "Baiye No.1" bases, achieving full traceability of tea quality.

The county promotes the tea industry development with an industrialized mindset, leveraging the benchmark role of the Zheng Shan Tang·Guzhang Red digital factory to drive clean and intelligent technological upgrades across tea firms throughout the county. At present, the county has cultivated one national-level, two provincial-level, and thirteen prefecture-level leading enterprises in agricultural industrialization, and has built 17 standardized production lines for green tea, 15 for black tea, and four for dark tea. Several special credit products such as the "Fuxiang·Chunya Loan" were innovatively launched, disbursing 52 million CNY in special loans for purchasing fresh tea leaves in the first half of the year. The county authority has guided enterprises to purchase summer and autumn fresh leaves without limits, and process them locally into black tea, dark tea, and raw materials for new-style tea beverages, achieving "picking tea in three seasons and making tea year-round."
 
Guzhang is building up its two national geographical indication products—Guzhang Maojian and Guzhang black tea, and continues to promote the "Guzhang Maojian·1955" new product line. By holding events such as the "Tiangong Tea King" handmade tea competition and the provincial rural livestream host summer competition, the county has built more than 10 tea-tourism integrated demonstration sites, making the event economy and study tours new drivers of consumption. More than 300 outlets have been set up in multiple cities including Changsha, Beijing, and Shanghai, and over 60 tea enterprises have joined e-commerce platforms, with tea e-commerce sales reaching 508 million CNY in the first half of this year.

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government. www.enghunan.gov.cn. 

Translator: Pang Yuehui 

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn