Dongxiang Oil Tea

Dongxiang Oil Tea

　　Dongxiang Oil Tea

　　Dongxiang Oil Tea, also known as Jar Tea, is a unique snack of the Dong people in Yuping. Its preparation process is quite complex, using ingredients such as camellia oil, tea leaves, alkaline ash cakes, fried rice, chili peppers, and various spices. It has a spicy and savory flavor, as attested by the song: “Comrade, come to Dongxiang and try the oil tea!”

　　　　Starting from the 1980s, Yuping Dong Autonomous County, located in eastern Guizhou Province, features mainly low mountain and hilly terrain and lies at the border between Hunan and Guizhou. For a long time, oil tea has been one of the pillar industries of the rural economy in the county. Leveraging its resource advantages, Yuping has gradually developed an industrialized path focusing on specialty economic forests such as oil tea and chestnuts. In the main producing towns, century-old cultivated oil tea trees can still be commonly seen, while oil tea forests aged 20–50 years remain the “main force” of today’s Yuping oil tea production. In 1958, at the National Agricultural Production Commendation Conference held by the State Council, Yuping oil tea was awarded a banner inscribed with the personal calligraphy of the Premier reading “Hometown of Oil Tea,” which greatly inspired the confidence and enthusiasm of the county's people in developing oil tea production. Currently, Yuping oil tea is mainly distributed across five towns and townships along the Wuyang River: Tianping Town, Dalong Town, Zhujiachang Town, Pingxi Town, and Xindian Township. The primary variety is common oil tea, which can be further divided into several local cultivars based on maturity periods, such as “Hanlu Zi,” “Shuangjiang Zi,” and “Lidong Zi.”

　　　　For a long time, institutions such as Guizhou Agricultural College, the Guizhou Academy of Forestry Sciences, and relevant research units in the Tongren region have carried out work on high-yield cultivation and superior variety selection of oil tea in Yuping, achieving certain results that have significantly improved the cultivation of superior varieties and the management level of oil tea production in the area. The period from the early days of the People’s Republic of China to the 1980s was the golden age of Yuping oil tea. At that time, the county’s oil tea cultivation area exceeded 12,000 hectares, with an annual production of nearly 3,000 tons of tea seeds. Currently, the county has an oil tea cultivation area of 9,000 hectares, with an annual total tea seed production of 1,600 tons, ranking first in the Tongren region of Guizhou Province. In specialized oil tea towns and villages such as Dalong and Zhujiachang, the per capita cultivation area can reach as much as 2 mu, with the per capita net income from oil tea reaching over 190 yuan, accounting for about 11% of the total annual income. At present, there are 11 processing and sales enterprises in the county, including one state-owned and ten township or private enterprises, with an annual processing capacity of 1,000 tons of tea oil, total sales output value of 12 million yuan, and profits and taxes exceeding 3 million yuan. The county also employs over 300 people in oil tea processing and sales. To enhance the added value of oil tea and its products and further increase income from oil tea operations, the oil tea processing industry in Yuping has emerged and evolved from simple manual primitive pressing to modern assembly-line operations. Yuping Linda Industrial Co., Ltd. is a leading enterprise in the Yuping oil tea processing industry. Its product, “Linda Brand Refined Tea Oil,” is produced using advanced imported equipment through gravity pressing and repeated filtration. This brand of tea oil contains no chemical additives, thereby effectively ensuring its “purely natural tea oil” value. In addition to being sold primarily within the province and in Hunan and Guangdong, the “Linda” refined tea oil is also exported to Hong Kong and Southeast Asian countries.