Traditionally, Chinese high-value tea made from the very first tea sprouts in Spring that should be picked before the Qingming Festival, which falls on April 5 this year. Recently, the Spring harvest season for tea has come across Guangdong.
Qingyuan's Yingde is renowned as the "hometown of black tea in China". Recently, tea workers here are busy in the first round of picking for the spring tea leaves this year.
During this period, the workers can only pick a bud and a piece or two pieces of leaves for each tea blossom, with strict picking standards. Therefore, the processed teas that are available in market is very limited, and that's why there is a saying that goes, "The tea produced before Qingming is as expensive as gold."
Yingde is the largest black tea production base in Guangdong. Its tea culture dates back to the Tang Dynasty, over 1,200 years ago. Yingde's black tea enjoys great reputation in both China and abroad. In 1963, the British royal family popularized Yingde's black tea worldwide after offering the tea to guests at the Queen's Banquet.
Photo: Nanfang Daily
By the end of 2021, the total area of the standardized tea plantations in Yingde has covered about 133 square kilometers, with an annual output of dry tea reaching 13,500 tons last year, a tea output value of over five billion yuan as well as a comprehensive output value of 5.7 billion yuan. According to Qi Kangbiao, a tea expert and professor of Sun Yat-sen University, Yingde highlights favorable geological and climatic conditions, and home to a variety of first-class teas in China. Yingde is one of the tea tree species bank, with Yinghong No.9 as most widely planted one.
