By Justin Jin (Full text available on request)
A family had gathered in front of an millenium-old tree on Jingmai mountain, 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 in southwestern China. But for the family, it was the heart of a living shrine: They prayed to their Tea Spirit Tree, asking an ancestor, now considered a deity, to deliver a strong harvest.
This photo-text journey takes us deep into Jingmai Mountain, home to the world's oldest tea forest, where trees over a millennium old still produce the coveted Pu'er tea. Through drought and prosperity, traditional wisdom and modern markets, UNESCO recognition and climate challenges, we witness how one Indigenous community's unwavering devotion to their ancestral practices has transformed "drinkable gold" into both cultural preservation and economic triumph. Their story reminds us that some treasures grow stronger with time, if we stay true to the mission.
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.
Credits:
Justin Jin