Meitan Tea

Meitan Tea

　　Meitan Tea is a specialty of Meitan County in Zunyi City, Guizhou Province. Meitan County is the top tea-producing county in Guizhou, known as the "Hometown of Famous Chinese Teas" and the largest tea base in the province.

　　The cultivation of Meitan Tea has a long history. The Tea Sage Lu Yu mentioned in his classic work, The Classic of Tea: "In central Guizhou, there are Si Prefecture, Bo Prefecture, Fei Prefecture, Yi Prefecture... where tea is often obtained, and its flavor is excellent." The Qing Dynasty’s Guizhou General Annals recorded: "All regions under the jurisdiction of Guizhou produce tea... Meitan eyebrow-tip tea is among the tribute teas." During the Anti-Japanese War, National Zhejiang University relocated to Meitan to operate its campus. The Central Agricultural Experiment Station of the Ministry of Agriculture and the China Tea Company established an experimental tea farm in Meitan, conducting research on tea planting, breeding, tea processing, and disease prevention. These efforts had a profound impact on the later development of Meitan's tea industry.

　　Meitan Tea is of high quality and comes in many brands, with 17 products winning provincial or ministerial-level excellence awards, as well as possessing Zunyi municipal brand-name products and other premium green teas. Although the number of brands is large, brand concentration is low, making it difficult to create a strong brand effect. In the past, a large number of tea merchants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang would come to Guizhou every year to process Meitan Tea into varieties such as Longjing and Biluochun. The situation was that "tea farmers got small profits, processors got big profits, and tea merchants got huge profits"—this was once the survival reality of Meitan Tea.

　　Of course, Meitan Tea was not content to always be someone else’s “stand-in.” In 2009, 75,000 new mu of tea gardens were added, bringing the county’s total tea garden area to 280,000 mu, of which 125,000 mu were in production. The total tea output reached 11,000 tons, with a production value of 616 million yuan, and comprehensive tea industry revenue hit 1.02 billion yuan, representing year-on-year increases of 43.6%, 62.1%, and 43.7% respectively. While strictly controlling the quality of tea production, efforts were also made to build strong tea brands. In a series of national and international prestigious tea competitions such as the "China Tea Cup" and "China Green Tea Cup," Meitan Tea won the Gold Award 28 times. In the "Top Ten Famous Teas of Guizhou" competition, "Meitan Cuiya" claimed the top spot. Our county has been awarded the titles of "National Key Tea-Producing County" and "National Top Ten Characteristic Tea-Producing County" by the China Tea Marketing Association, and was voted "The Most Popular Tea-Producing Area Among the Public" by People's Daily Online.