Culture of Anxi tie guan yin tea（1）
The Anxi tie guan yin tea culture is part of essence of the Chinese 5000-year-old culture. The Anxi
tea culture is venerable, unique, gorgeous, abundant in content and various informative, especially the tranquility, harmony and elegance of Anxi tie guan yin tea,
which brings the whole Anxi county dazzling highlight.
Anxi is the native place of Chinese oolong tea as well as the cradleland of the nonesuch tie guan yin tea. The Anxi tea culture is venerable, unique, gorgeous,
abundant in content and various informative, which is the crystal of Anxi natives’ industry and wisdom and the symbol of Anxi culture as well. The tea cultural
atmosphere in Anxi county is very rich. Since the national “Tie guan yin Cup” singing competition held in Anxi in 1988, the folk activity “King of
Tea” became more and more famous. The prefectural government has successfully conducted the tea competition “Four Famous Teas” early or late in
Quanzhou, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Honkong, Macao, Fuzhou and Changsha. The competition combines other activities like tasting famous tea, Anxi tea-
ceremony performance, singing tea songs and tea dance, which publicize Anxi oolong tea as well as carry forward Anxi tea culture.
In 2000, the Anxi county successfully held the activity “Chinese Tea County (Anxi) Tea Culture Tourist Festival and First Tie guan yin Oolong Tea
Festival”. In 2001, Anxi held “Tea Culture Exchanging Meeting between both Sides of the Straits”. In 2002 and 2003, Anxi held two session
“Chinese tea industry international cooperation summit meeting”. In 2004, “the sixth world Anxi natives sodality” was successfully held.
Besides, Anxi county also invested to build the remarkable Tea Grand View Garden which has collected 53 varieties of domestic and abroad famous tea and the Tea Park
including amusement and recreation, historic interests and sightseeing, which enriches the content of tea cultural tourism. Currently, the Anxi tea cultural tour has
been listed one of the three national tea tour routes.
For twenty years, all previous Anxi county Party committees and prefectural governments have been insisting in taking the implementing of the strategy “tea
enriches people” as their first project and trying to run it big and strong. To the end of 2008, the main planting tea varieties are tie guan yiin tea, golden
osmanthus tea, maoxie tea, benshan tea and large-leaf oolong tea while tie guan yin tea is the
uppermost variety. At that time, the area of tea gardens in the whole county reached to 600,000 mu and the yearly capacity was 60,000 tons while the gross product of
tea-related industries was 6.5 billion yuan. The per capita annual tea income was 3,918 yuan, 55% of per capita net income. There were more than 570 tea processing
enterprises while 15% of them have the annual value of production above 5 million. More than 800,000 people profited from tea industry for more than 30,000 labor force
were working in tea-related industries. The development of tea industry meanwhile spurred the developing of packages printing, machine building industry, food
handling, transportation and logistics, catering and hotels, tea cultural tour and real estate. Anxi tea industry created the very front places over the whole country
in area of tea gardens, yearly tea capacity, tea gross product, tea beneficial population, tea-related workers and tea industrialization degree.
The award-winning laurels for Anxi over the years are without number. In March of 1995, Anxi County, was named by the Ministry of Agriculture as “the Town of
Chinese oolong tea (famous tea)”. In 2001, Anxi was identified as “producing base of the first batch of national pollution-free agricultural products
(tea)”.At the same time,the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Foreign Trade identified it as “the exporting demonstration area of national
horticultural products (tea) “. In 2002, Anxi was again identified by the Ministry of Agriculture as ” a famous base of southern subtropical crops (oolong
tea).” In 2003, it was cited as “advanced unit of national pollution-free farm produce(tea) production base”. In 2005, Tie Guan Yin produced in Anxi
was included in the “protective products of original area” by the state. In 2008, Anxi Tie Guan Yin was officially stationed in the Expo and became the
first brand of tea there, which made a new level to step to the world. In the same year, the traditional manufacturing craft of Anxi tie guan yin tea was listed in the
national non-material cultural heritage list and was recommended by national Ministry of Culture to the UNNCH. The current area of Anxi tea gardens, yearly total tea
output and gross product of tea-related industry rank the first of whole country. Tie guan yin tea especially obtained two “top” in Chinese tea kingdom:
“top of the ten famous teas in Chinese World Expo” and “top of the one hundred tea producing counties around the country”.
Article from: http://www.tie-guan-yin-
tea.com/blog/2011/09/14/culture-of-anxi-tie-guan-yin-tea%ef%bc%881%ef%bc%89/
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