Cultivating a tea leaf, activating an industrial chain, enriching the local people.
In recent years, Ziyun Autonomous County has planned Dayang Town and Bandang Town as the core areas for tea planting, driving the development of the tea industry in surrounding towns. By making great efforts in planting management, development models, and processing to extend the industrial chain, the tea industry has entered a new fast track of rapid development, achieving a transformation from green leaves to “golden leaves,” enriching the local people.
Expansion of Main Entities and Scale
Standing on the tea garden scenic platform in Bantong Village, Dayang Town, one can see a sea of green stretching out before them. As the breeze blows, waves of tea fragrance waft over, leaving one feeling refreshed.
“The tea garden in Bantong Group of our village was newly cultivated and planted in 2025, covering an area of more than 1,000 mu. The quality of the first batch of Spring Tea harvested and processed this year is quite good,” said Wu Feng, the village party secretary of Xinshan Village. Currently, the tea garden operated by the village cooperative covers about 4,000 mu.
In recent years, Ziyun Autonomous County has strengthened the cultivation of main entities and expanded the scale of the industry, successively introducing several tea companies and fostering the growth of local tea enterprises. Adopting the development model of “leading enterprise + cooperative + households,” it has driven the joint development of tea gardens by seven village cooperatives. Currently, there are 16 tea companies and 15 cooperatives cultivated, including two provincial-level leading enterprises, five municipal-level leading enterprises, five national model cooperatives, four provincial model cooperatives, and eight municipal model cooperatives. The tea gardens operated by tea companies and cooperatives in the county cover an area of approximately 47,000 mu.
“Since 2025, a total of 90 million yuan in fiscal funds have been invested in the tea industry. Taking the ecological tea park construction as a platform, Dayang Town and Bandang Town have been planned as the core areas for tea industry development, driving surrounding towns to expand their tea planting scale. In Xiaozhaiguan Village, Bandang Town, 3,000 mu of new tea gardens have been planted,” said Feng Zulun, head of the Agricultural Modernization Development Specialized Team of Ziyun Autonomous County's Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Currently, the county's tea planting area totals 55,800 mu, mainly distributed across seven villages in Dayang Town (Xinshan, Dapo, Xinyang, Siliang, Pingtang, Chaying, and Dapo) and three villages in Bandang Town (Soutoukou, Binggong, and Xiaozhaiguan), with scattered plantings in Maoying, Baishiyao, and Houchang.
Empowerment Through Science and Technology to Improve Quality
In recent years, various tea enterprises and specialized cooperatives for tea planting in Ziyun Autonomous County have followed the management standards of “healthy tea,” “safe tea,” and “reassuring tea.” No pesticides or herbicides are used in the tea gardens, and organic tea fertilization standards are strictly adhered to in order to enhance the quality of Ziyun spring tea.
The Tulihongpo tea garden in Dayang Town, as a test base for the Guizhou Tea Research Institute, not only strengthened the renovation of the tea garden road network but also installed production water and cleaning water pipelines within the tea garden. The production water pipeline ensures that the water used for irrigating tea seedlings is free of pollution; the cleaning water pipeline is convenient for tea garden workers to clean their hands, ensuring that the harvested tea leaves are clean and hygienic. This practice is being promoted in all tea gardens in Ziyun.
“To improve the quality of tea, we use homemade Bordeaux mixture as the raw material for green pest control in tea gardens,” said Chen Ping, the person in charge of the Tulihongpo Tea Company in Dayang Town. The Tulihongpo tea garden is a demonstration base for the integrated transformation of green pest control technologies in tea trees, part of a major scientific and technological achievement conversion project in Guizhou. Experts visit the site every month, and various demonstration zones have been established in the tea garden, such as an insect pathogenic nematode control demonstration zone for tea thrips, a scientific pesticide application technology demonstration zone, a microflower bug storage plant ecological control technology demonstration zone, and a manual release technology demonstration zone for microflower bugs.
“In recent years, the tea industry in Ziyun Autonomous County has relied on technological support, strengthened brand creation, and demonstrated significant advantages, generating a favorable brand effect. In 2025, the ‘Ziyun Spring Tea' obtained a national geographical indication certificate. There are three Guizhou Green Tea branding enterprises, two green product certification enterprises, and three organic product certification enterprises. Tea products are sold far and wide in the domestic market, laying a solid foundation for the organic and ecological branding of Ziyun tea,” said Feng Zulun.
Processing and Extending the Chain to Increase Benefits
Currently, it is the season for summer and Autumn Tea harvesting. At the tea garden in Xinshan Village, many villagers can be seen using single-person tea harvesters to pick summer and autumn tea. “With this machine, I can harvest 700 pounds a day, at 0.3 yuan per pound, earning 210 yuan a day,” said Li Xiaohui, a villager from Xinshan Village. Although picking tea with a single-person harvester is tiring, it does come with corresponding rewards.
“There are two categories for the summer and autumn tea we pick. One category is fresh tea leaves for processing Black Tea, which are manually picked at a rate of 1 yuan per pound, and skilled villagers can pick over 200 pounds a day. Another category is fresh tea leaves sold to a company in the Maoying Industrial Park for tea liquor production, which are harvested using single-person and double-person tea harvesters at a rate of 0.3 yuan per pound,” said Lu Yong, deputy party secretary of Xinshan Village. After the tea leaves for tea liquor are harvested, they are made into dried tea and sold to the tea liquor company at 6 yuan per pound.
“In 2025, our county utilized 11 million yuan from East-West cooperation assistance funds to build a Tea processing factory in Dapo Village, Dayang Town, purchasing 120 large-scale tea production equipment and 41 high-quality tea processing equipment. This truly broke the historical record of not processing summer and autumn tea in our county and can sustainably process 40,000 mu of summer and autumn bulk tea,” said Feng Zulun. In 2025, 1.2 million yuan from funds for revitalization and connection were used to purchase 285 pieces of tea garden harvesting and management equipment (150 single-person tea harvesters, 20 double tea harvesters, 10 double-person pruning machines, 100 single-person pruning machines, and 5 brush cutters). The increase in equipment greatly improved the harvesting rate of summer and autumn tea leaves in the county, promoting the production of summer and autumn tea.
To date this year, the county's tea production is approximately 1,790 tons, with a value of about 426 million yuan. It is expected that the output of summer and autumn tea this year will exceed 2,000 tons, with a value of over 120 million yuan.