Migrant workers returning home in Xishui, Guizhou "light up" the economy of ancient tea trees

Zhou Congsheng, a Guizhou migrant worker who once worked in Anxi, Fujian Province, never thought that he would change from a poor boy in a mountain village to a senior tea commentator, driving one side of the farmers to become rich.

"when I went to work in Anxi in 1998, I was small and didn't want a construction site. He was introduced into a Tieguanyin processing plant and became an apprentice. " Zhou Congsheng said that during his 10 years in Anxi, he not only mastered the production process of Tieguanyin, but also learned tea seedling cultivation, cutting, tea processing and other skills.

In 2005, Zhou Congsheng, already an excellent tea maker, returned to his hometown for the first time to celebrate the Spring Festival. when he saw that the bud heads of wild ancient tea trees in his hometown were green and strong, which were better than those grown by artificial fertilization, he was overjoyed.

"at that time, I came up with the idea of returning to my hometown to develop the ancient tea industry." Zhou Congsheng said that in the following years, the villagers in his hometown randomly cut down hundreds of years old tea trees as firewood, which made him even more restless. In 2008, Zhou Congsheng, who had a successful career in Anxi, resolutely returned home with years of savings to start a business in spite of the opposition of his family, ready to "light up" the ancient tea tree economy of his hometown on his own.

Zhou Congsheng's hometown, located in Xishui County, Guizhou Province, at the junction of Sichuan, Guizhou and Chongqing, is a large mountain area suitable for the growth of ancient tea trees. According to the preliminary statistics of Xishui County Forestry Bureau, there are 233759 ancient tea trees in the county. Among them, there are 100369 ancient tea trees with DBH greater than 10 cm, 9311 ancient tea trees more than 100 years old, and the oldest ancient tea tree is 550 years old.

"in order to protect the ancient tea trees, I spend 40,000 yuan every year to hire villagers to protect 30,000 mu of ancient tea trees in the mountains. At the same time, I try to make ancient tea products by stir-frying oolong tea and Tieguanyin, hoping to promote the protection of ancient tea trees in the way of industry." Zhou Congsheng said.

But the trial production process is full of hardships. Zhou Congsheng said that in the first four years of his business, he lost nearly 2 million yuan because he could not find the right way to develop ancient tea trees, and he was burdened with more than 1 million yuan of usury due to the construction of the factory.

The turnaround occurred in 2012. A foreign merchant who had accidentally tasted Zhou Congsheng's ancient tea products suggested him to develop black tea products. In order to make a pot of good black tea, Zhou Congsheng returned to Fujian to study the method of making black tea in Wuyishan and successfully produced the Xishui ancient tea tree black tea product that won the "Special Gold Award of the third China International Tea Industry and Tea Art Expo".

The improvement in the efficiency of the enterprise has led to the purchase of local tea. "in 2012, my tea company alone bought more than 3000 jin of dried tea from surrounding villagers, and this year it bought more than 7000 jin of dried tea. Chaqing alone paid 760000 yuan to the villagers." Zhou Congsheng said.

Mu Bing, deputy director of the Xishui County Forestry Bureau, said that in recent years, driven by Zhou Congsheng's industry, Xishui County has successively set up seven companies to develop the ancient tea tree industry, with an annual output value of about 50 million yuan, driving more than 2,000 villagers to pick tea to make tea. the per capita income of picking tea only increased by more than 1200 yuan.

Villager Lu Peng told reporters that this year he picked more than 420 jin of wild mountain ancient tea trees from the mountains more than 1200 meters above sea level, and sold them for more than 20,000 yuan, accounting for 1/3 of his family's annual income. "now, because the ancient tea trees are valuable, many villagers have put up fences to protect the old tea trees and go to the mountains from time to time during the day for fear of being stolen."

In order to continuously protect and develop ancient tea resources, Zhou Congsheng also invested nearly 500000 yuan in cutting and breeding more than 2 million ancient tea seedlings in recent years, and successfully planted more than 1000 mu of ancient tea trees.

Now, Zhou Congsheng is ready to try e-commerce marketing and the integration of tea and tourism, so as to expand the development space of ancient tea trees in Xishui and turn the former "cooking firewood" into a "rich tree" for villagers.