"Our village grows among ancient trees." Yan Gongchang, a Dai villager in Jingmai Village, Jingmai Mountain, Pu'er City, Yunnan Province, stood in the Nuogan ancient village and looked at the ancient Dai house wrapped in layers of tea trees.
The black-tiled wooden buildings are arranged at random, and the stilt-style houses built with mortise and tenon joints are hidden among the green trees, showing the original style of the symbiosis of forest and tea. This is the scene that reporters saw recently when they participated in an interview on the theme of "Building a Strong Community, China is a Family".
On September 17, 2023, the "Pu'er Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest Cultural Landscape" was included in the World Heritage List, becoming the world's first tea-themed world cultural heritage. This honor places higher demands on local conservation efforts.
"Successful application as a World Heritage Site means an improvement in protection standards. In addition to ancient tea trees, the protection objects also include ancient village buildings, ethnic customs, and the entire ecosystem of forest and tea symbiosis. Villagers of all ethnic groups are the first people responsible for heritage protection." said Yan Sailuan, secretary of the Jingmai Village Party Committee and director of the village committee.
Yan Gongchang is a young entrepreneur who has returned to his hometown and runs tea gardens, teahouses and B&Bs. He insists on small-scale operations and refuses to renovate houses on a large scale. His B&B has only renovated one of the old houses. It is priced at 600 yuan in the off-season and doubles in the peak season.
The bonus of Jingmai Mountain being declared a World Heritage Site has driven the tourism market to heat up rapidly. In 2024, Jingmai Mountain will receive 445,000 tourists, an increase of 247% compared with before the successful application; in 2025, it will receive 694,300 tourists, an increase of 56.27% year-on-year; so far, the number of tourists this year has exceeded 1 million.
In addition to the ancient tea forests and ancient villages recorded in the heritage application text, natural scenery such as Princess Banyan Tree, Giant Pea Pod, Sunrise and Sea of Clouds have also been discovered by tourists. In the face of the tourism boom, the local area adheres to the original layout of Guzhai, and houses are not easily rented out. Private demolition and construction are prohibited in Laozhai, and new housing sites are planned to be unified in Xinzhai.
"The ancient village is a living world heritage. The living life of ethnic minorities is the real vitality of the village." Yan Gongchang said, "The Jingmai Mountain Tea Forest is not a cultural relic in the eyes of the Dai people, but a composite ecosystem composed of people, tea, forests and villages, which needs to be protected by all ethnic groups living in the area."
Zhou Tianhong, deputy director of Pu'er City Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest Protection Management Bureau, said that Jingmai Mountain follows the concept of promoting development through protection and has built a protection system, development red lines, and long-term framework in the past three years to effectively alleviate practical problems such as space carrying pressure on heritage sites and the boom in foreign capital investment, and to assist the protection and development of heritage sites.
Jingmai Mountain has 28,000 acres of contiguous ancient tea forests and more than 3.2 million ancient tea trees. The forest-tea symbiosis has lasted for thousands of years. Tea is the source of income for most local families. In recent years, Yansailan has led the villagers to put the protection of ancient tea trees at the top of industrial development.
"We pick tea leaves twice a year, in spring and autumn, and not in summer. We only pick one bud and two pieces, and 70% of the fresh tea leaves of a tea tree cannot be harvested." Yan Sailuan said that the village currently incorporates the protection of ancient tea trees into village regulations and folk agreements. The local ethnic groups continue the tradition of moderate picking and rely on the people to manage and protect the tea forest independently. The abuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, destructive pruning, deforestation and land conversion, etc. are strictly prohibited. “Protect the ancient tea trees so that future generations can continue to enjoy the dividends brought by this natural resource.”
The successful application for World Heritage attracted a large number of young people to return to the mountains and became a new force in heritage protection and rural development.
Kang Weifang, a post-2000s girl from the Blang ethnic group in Mangjing Village, is currently a member of the Mangjing Village Committee, the village women’s director, and the chairman of the village women’s federation. While running her own tea industry and catering, she also devoted herself to village management. Her family owns 35 acres of ancient tea gardens and more than 50 acres of ecological tea gardens. Her family of four participates in the management, and they also open a restaurant that specializes in home-cooked dishes of the Blang ethnic group.
"Natural ancient tea is the most solid foundation for me to start a business." Kang Weifang said that after the successful application for World Heritage, a series of changes have taken place in the village: the government invested in improving the infrastructure of Mangjing Village, repaired roads, put electric wires into the ground, upgraded the sewage and drinking water systems, repaired Wengji Ancient Village, and 49 national-level traditional stilt-style buildings were completely protected.
"The overall landscape and environment of the Jingmai Mountain heritage site has improved, the villagers' willingness to protect it has become stronger, and the people's civilized quality and national cultural confidence have been greatly improved. When Jingmai Mountain was on fire, the cultural heritage also came to life." Zhou Tianhong said.
In Yan Sairan’s view, the value of Jingmai Mountain lies not only in ancient trees and old houses, but also in the living and continuing human settlements and national culture. “We hope to attract more young people to return home, promote Jingmai Mountain to the outside world through e-commerce and new media, become a new force in heritage protection and cultural dissemination, and continue to pass on the ecological wisdom of ancestral tea cultivation in the forest.”
