Shen Nong Bencao, a classic piece of Chinese medical literature dating back to the Qin (221-206 BC) and Western Han (206 BC-AD 24) dynasties, notes that "tea with a bitter taste ...grows by the roadside in mountain valleys in Yizhou (today's Sichuan) and would not wither in winter."

Shen Nong was a legendary Chinese ruler who started agriculture and discovered the curative virtues of plants some 5,000 years ago. The book named after him indicates the prevalence of tea culture in Sichuan in ancient times, said Yang Tianjiong, vice-chairman of the Mingshan County's Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

"But what people drank then was not cultivated but wild tea. Not until Wu Lizhen, a native of Mingshan County, grew seven tea trees on top of Mengshan Mountain around 53 BC in the Han Dynasty did tea planting begin in human history," said Yang, also an expert on tea cultivation.

County and provincial annals as well as A Comprehensive History of Chinese Tea all recognize Wu Lizhen as the first known tea grower in the world. "He was given the posthumous title Master Sweet Dew by Emperor Xiaozong of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279)," says Yang. "That marked the first and highest official recognition of Wu's outstanding contributions to tea cultivation."

Sweet Dew is actually the name brand of one of the best tea products the county now turns out. And the small garden in which Wu is believed to grow the tea trees on top of Mengshan, towering over the county seat of Mingshan at 1,456 metres above sea level, is still well preserved.

"As a tea tree cannot last more than 300 or 400 years, new tea trees would be grown to replace the old ones every few centuries," says Yang. "The seven trees now growing in the garden are 70 or 80 years old."

Nearby is a temple with a statue of Wu Lizhen enshrined for people to worship. Since the Mengshan tea was designated as an imperial tribute in AD 742 during the Tang Dynasty, the temple had witnessed annual rituals of tea picking in the garden for some 1,170 years up to 1911.

"The rituals were to show respect for the special tea leaves, which even the emperors were not entitled to enjoy, since they were to be offered to Heaven by the emperors," says Sun Qian, vice-mayor of Ya'an, which has Mingshan and seven other counties under its jurisdiction.

"It is unusual for a single product to function as a royal sacrifice offered to Heaven continuously for so many centuries, up to 1911 when the last feudal dynasty in Chinese history was toppled," Sun says.

While taking pride in this glorious tradition, Sun deplores that the Mengshan tea is little known to consumers today. "As a saying goes among tea drinkers, no water is better than that in the middle of the Yangtze in its lower reaches and no tea is better than that growing on top of Mengshan Mountain," he said. "But today we do not even have a single brand among the top 10 Chinese teas."

Misty mountain

Only an hour's drive to the southwest of Chengdu, the provincial capital, the county of Mingshan, meaning "famous mountains" in Chinese, claims natural conditions ideal for tea cultivation, said Yang Tianjiong. Yang has been working in the county's tea plantations since his graduation as a tea cultivation major from the Southwest China Agriculture University in 1962.

The tea plantations in the hilly county are at 580-750 metres above sea level, with more than 70 per cent of the soil featuring acidity desirable for tea growth. The county has an average annual temperature of 15.5 C, an annual rainfall of 1,520 mm, an annual sunshine of 1,035 hours and an annual frost-free period of 298 days. "These are all favourable conditions for the cultivation of quality tea," says Yang. "The name of Mengshan itself means 'misty mountain' in Chinese."

Last year, Mingshan was checked and accepted by the Ministry of Agriculture as a county where tea plantations are free of pollution. The Mengshan tea features a lingering aroma with a sweet aftertaste and rich nutrient. "And we have quite a high yield, at about 97 kilograms of dry leaves to one mu (15 mu equal one hectare)," Yang says.

Then why has Mengshan tea remained in the shadow of such famous brands as Dragon Well and Green Shell Spring? Yang attributes it to Mingshan's geographical location adjacent to areas inhabited by ethnic groups, including Tibetans, Yi, Qiang and others.

"While Mingshan provided 365 leaves of Mengshan tea as imperial tribute every year in the feudal dynasties, it was also designated by the royal court as a monopolized tea supplier to Tibetan areas," Yang says.

During the Song Dynasty, for instance, Mengshan tea was specially used to trade for horses from areas the ethnic groups inhabited. A special government office was set up at Mingshan to operate the tea-horse trade in 1047.

This kind of specialization has somehow hindered Mingshan from upgrading its tea processing technology and expanding its tea market in other regions, and withheld its fame in the tea world, says Yang.

The city government of Ya'an is determined to bring Mengshan tea out of the shadows and regain its glory, says Sun Qian, the vice-mayor. "From 1985 to 2001, the acreage of Mingshan's tea plantations increased from 1,700 hectares to more than 4,666 hectares, with tea output growing from 1.5 million kilograms to 6.84 million kilograms. And a number of quality tea strains have been cultivated."

"We now account for one sixth of Sichuan's overall tea output," says Yang. "By 2010 our tea acreage will expand to 16,666 hectares with production reaching 30 million kilograms," Yang says.

Pillar industry

The effort to make the tea industry into a pillar of the local national economy has drawn both domestic and international investors. Noticeable among them is the Chia Tai Group of Thailand, which has built its very first tea plant to process oolong tea at Mingshan.

As a traditional seed, feed and plant protection enterprise, Chia Tai is not experienced in tea industry, admits Visood Thammansimol, production manager of the Chai Tai Mingshan Oolong Tea Plant. "And oolong tea is something new to local farmers. So it was a great challenge to Chia Tai when it started the tea business at Mingshan in 1996."

Although Chia Tai is yet to recoup the investment from its tea venture, the business seems promising, says Visood. In the seven years the plant has developed a tea plantation of 66 hectares, involving dozens of local farmer households to grow oolong tea trees under the company's technical guidance.

"The yield averages around 1,500 kilograms per hectare, with the highest hitting 2,250 kilograms," says the manager from Thailand. "The local farmers have seen that it is more profitable to grow oolong tea and are willing to co-operate with us."

Another noticeable investor is Cering Dondin, a Tibetan businessman from Lhasa, who built the Tibet Langsai Tea Factory at Mingshan in 2001. The first brick tea factory ever operated by a Tibetan in the interior, Langsai is now producing 30 tons of brick tea a year and plans to turn out 50 tons this year, according to Zhaping, director of the factory and son-in-law of Cering Dondin.

A fully fermented black tea made from old tea leaves and stems, brick tea has been traditionally enjoyed by Tibetans and people of other ethnic groups.

"Langsai aims to provide the best tea for Tibetan people and it pays to build the factory at the place where the tea trees are grown," says Zhaping. "Our Jinyebazha has taken one third of the brick tea market in Tibet and Qinghai and Tibetan inhabited areas in Sichuan. We have also begun to export our products to Nepal and India."

All this has boosted Ya'an's aspiration to revive its fame as the birthplace of tea cultivation, says Sun Qian.

The city has won the bid to host the 8th International Symposium on Tea Culture scheduled for September 2004. "By then we will fully display the charisma of Mingshan's tea products as well as tea culture," Sun says. "And we will get rid of the irony that the county where human cultivation of tea first started is not known as the producer of quality teas."

(China Daily June 5, 2003)