Explore China - Harvesting Tradition

A couple, both 103 years old, rests after picking tea on the mountain. Photo: IC

Women sit around a table picking yellow leaves out of the tea harvest. Photo: IC

During an April ceremony to pay respect to ancestors, children and elders dressed in traditional clothes hold a plate of tea in their hands. Photo: IC

In the spring, almost every family sends someone into the mountains to pick tea. Photo: IC

A local resident dries tea leaves on a roof. Photo: IC

"If I leave you horses and oxen, they will die when disaster strikes. If I leave you mountains of gold and silver, they will vanish as time goes by. If I leave you tea plants, your offspring can live on them forever."

These are the last words of an ancestor of the Pu people, who were reputedly the first people to grow tea.

It is believed the Pu people became the Dai, Bulang, Wa and Deang ethnic groups. Some of these groups live on Jingmai Mountain in Yunnan Province, where tea is thought to have originated.

In April every year, the descendants of the Pu people set up altars and thank their ancestors for leaving them tea. The ceremony lasts for a few days. Children and elders hold tea in their hands and pay their respects, followed by representatives from every ethnic group. During the ceremony, ancient dances are also performed.

In order to continue the culture, many young people return home upon graduation after traveling outside the village to be educated. Dao Yanliang, of the Dai minority, graduated from a university in Hebei Province with a degree in information technology, but chose to become a tea planter at Jingmai.

Dao used the Internet to introduce his family's tea plantation to the outside world and bring customers.

Zhou Tianhai, a Bulang ethnic group minority, graduated from the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou in 2004. When he went back home, he found out that a lot of the local traditions he grew up with are facing extinction.

He found that many people are building their houses with concrete instead of bamboo, like the old days. Many young people don't even know about their traditions.

This April, in order to design a traditional ethnic building as an example to show others, Zhou invited architects to tour the village.

"There shouldn't be just tea here," he said. "Along with it, there should also be our spiritual traditions, as well as cultural continuation."

Source - Global Times