Songyang is the major area of tea production in Zhejiang, as well as an important town of tea trade in China. It covers 131,800 acres of tea gardens. Fields here are always surrounded by the fragrance of tea.

Liu Xiaogao, an 80-year-old tea farmer in Shang’an Village, is one of the first tea growers in Songyang to cultivate and process tea. In 1983, regardless of the objection from his family, he contracted for 74 acres of tea gardens in Shang’an and Dafan villages, learning tea-planting techniques to improve inefficient tea gardens.

In 1990, Liu developed a new style. He took the lead in growing tea in fields and succeeded. For a moment, developing tea gardens became a hot trend among dwellers in Shang’an Village. Four years later, Liu shifted his focus to process tea and built tea companies. Nowadays, young tea farmers in Songyang start e-commerce and sell much more good tea to all over the country.

In Songyang, little tea leaves become “gold leaves”, which actually make people here rich. In 2019, tea output in Songyang reached 15,700 tons and its value reached 1.576 billion yuan.  The output value of the whole industrial chain reached 12.413 billion yuan. 40% of the town’s population works in tea industry, and 50% of the farmers' income comes from it. 60% of the agricultural output value comes from tea industry. Tea industry has become the genuine pillar industry of Songyang’s economic development.

A little tea leaf not only brings the revitalization of industry, the gathering of talents and the collision of cultures to Songyang, but also makes Songyang achieve the unification of wealthy people and beautiful environment in the process of green ecological development. Tea endows countries here with both the beauty of “green hills and clear waters” and the connotation of “gold and silver mountains”.

(Compiled by Xu Yuhong, translated by Zou Guan'er)