Tea Spirit Guardians Indigenous Chinese growers cultivate the world's oldest tea forests to produce "Drinkable Gold"

By Justin Jin (Full text available on request)

In a high-elevation forest on Jingmai Mountain, dawn broke over a green peak, bathing an ancient tea tree in warm light. A four-foot-wide trunk along with enormous branches, stretching up into a canopy of leaves, gave it an imposing bearing—nothing like the smaller tea shrubs often packed into tight rows on commercial farms throughout China. But this tree, deep within the southwestern Yunnan Province, was different. And it served a different purpose altogether.

A married couple named Ai Rong, 41, and Ke Lanfang, 36, had gathered with their elderly parents in front of the tree, chanting a prayer in the Blang people’s language, spoken by the Indigenous community throughout this region where five tea forests—collectively the oldest and largest on the planet—are cultivated. To the untrained eye, the tree might have been merely part of a forest. But for the family, it was the heart of a living shrine: They prayed to their Tea Spirit Tree, asking an ancestor named Pa Aileng, now considered a deity, to deliver a strong harvest. “It’s a thousand years old,” Ai said proudly, pointing to the tree’s large trunk. In recent years, however, his faith has seemed to be continually tested. At a time when the region’s highly specialized tea has gained widespread attention, commanding impressive prices, there are ever more unpredictable natural forces to contend with.

Tea is the world’s most popular beverage after water. Globally, people drink an estimated 45 billion gallons of it each year in a wide range of styles, from green to black and oolong. While these varieties exist because of different processing techniques, they all originate from the same fundamental ingredient: Camellia sinensis. The species of flowering evergreen has traveled the world, most notably when the colonial British brought it to India in the early 19th century, breaking China’s monopoly.

Today, however, one specific style remains inextricably tied to Jingmai Mountain. For more than a millennium, the Blang people, along with another Indigenous group called the Dai, are believed to have continuously maintained these ancient groves of Camellia sinensis var. assamica, a subtype that produces black tea, including the mountain’s dark, rich Pu’er tea. The coveted blend has been referred to as a “drinkable gold” among some tea connoisseurs, in part because many producers ferment it for a minimum of 10 years, which creates a deeper flavor and increases its worth. Among China’s growing affluent class, the nutty, earthy, and slightly bitter concoction has been compared to fine wine. It softens and becomes more complex—and collectible—with age.

Ai and his family own a plot of about 4,000 trees but had spent years struggling to earn a profit. Then in 2015, they decided to partner with a premium brand that sells high-end Pu’er. They now run a farming collective that employs workers throughout the area to help process tea from 37 different households, yielding about one ton of product annually. The Pu’er is pressed into circular cakes and aged, then packaged and sold for $330 per 12.6-ounce cake. Within Jingmai, the average income is significantly higher than it was two decades ago. For Ai and Ke, such gains and their entrepreneurial success have led to a combined income of around $40,000 a year, more than the average household in the nearby city of Humin.

Two years ago, UNESCO formally recognized Jingmai Mountain as a World Heritage site, an honor reserved for places that provide unique cultural value. It is the only site related to tea cultivation. Perhaps not coincidentally, the price of tea from Jingmai has roughly doubled since the idea of a certification was introduced more than a decade ago.