In Zhuwan Village, Xinchéng Town, Dawu County, Xiaogan City, Hubei Province, the Tea mountains are lush with greenery, and the tea fragrance permeates the Tea processing production workshops within the village. Every afternoon, tea farmers, braving the heat, carry bags filled with fresh tea leaves to the procurement stations. “Since the establishment of the Huang tea processing factory in our village, villagers have become busier picking tea leaves, and they can now earn an additional 100 to 200 yuan per day right at home,” said Yu Xueying with a smile. She added that her family used to mainly pick spring tea, but now summer and autumn teas, which were once overlooked, can also be processed into Huang tea, becoming a “golden” source of income for farmers.

Dawu County is located in the heart of the Dabie Mountain revolutionary old area and is renowned as a county that has produced many generals. Xinchéng Town is the hometown of Xu Haidong, a prominent general in the founding of the People's Republic of China. In the 1950s, Xu Haidong and his wife Zhou Dongping introduced tea seedlings from Anhui to be planted in Dawu. After several generations of diligent cultivation, the tea plantation area in the county has expanded to 300,000 mu (approximately 20,000 hectares), involving over 100,000 people in the tea industry, making it a pillar industry for Dawu's development. However, Dawu's tea industry had long focused on the spring tea harvest, leaving summer and autumn teas, unsuitable for Green Tea production, underutilized.

Zhuang Yunying, the Party Secretary of Zhuwan Village, noticed this issue and visited related tea-producing areas across the country to learn more. On the advice of experts, without increasing the tea plantation area, the summer and autumn teas in Dawu could be processed into Huang tea through semi-fermentation innovation techniques, thereby increasing farmers' incomes.

In 2025, Wang Shidong returned to his hometown to start a business and invested in establishing Hubei Hongluhuang Tea Co., Ltd. in Zhuwan Village. He introduced the “three steaming and three baking” technology for Huang tea, improving the quality and production efficiency. That year, he purchased 8,000 catties (approximately 4,000 kilograms) of summer and autumn teas from villagers and handcrafted the first batch of Huang tea. Over the past year, Dawu Huang tea has participated in multiple tea sales exhibitions, reaching markets through live-streaming sales, online e-commerce, supermarkets, businesses, and tea wholesalers, receiving positive feedback from consumers.

“Nowadays, the fresh leaves picked by the villagers are not hard to sell. The company categorizes them and processes them according to type and quality after acquisition,” said Wang Shidong. This year, the company has already purchased 180,000 catties (approximately 90,000 kilograms) of fresh leaves, producing over 30,000 catties (approximately 15,000 kilograms) of Huang tea, paying nearly 2 million yuan for the fresh tea leaves, benefiting over 2,200 tea farmers in eight surrounding towns, increasing their average income by over 2,000 yuan per mu. Moving forward, the company plans to conduct preliminary technical training for Huang tea production, build a number of shared tea processing workshops, and help more tea farmers increase their income locally. From Drinking Tea to using tea, the goal is to develop a full variety of tea products, harvested throughout all seasons, utilizing the entire leaf, forming a comprehensive tea industry that includes red, green, yellow, and white teas.

“The Huang tea industry should be considered a crucial component for supplementing and strengthening the entire tea industry in the county, cooperating with the existing 200 tea enterprises in Dawu to expand the scale of the tea industry,” said Chen Huacheng, head of the Dawu County Tea Industry Development Service Center. In recent years, with support from research institutions like the Fruit and Tea Research Institute of the Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the county has made certain achievements in areas such as tea science and technology innovation, new product development, technical cooperation between academia and industry, and construction of tea science popularization demonstration bases. It will continue to leverage tea science and technology to extend the tea industry chain and expand sales channels.

In front of the Huang tea company in Zhuwan Village, two excavators are working on construction, and a newly built Huang tea base is thriving with young, healthy tea plants. Relying on its green ecological resources, natural scenery, and cultural landscape, the local government is transforming the Huang tea production base into a tourist attraction that integrates tea tourism and Tea culture, as well as a revolutionary education and red study base, promoting the integration of tea, culture, and tourism industries.

Zhuang Yunying explained that the introduction of tea enterprises into the village has not only revitalized resources but also boosted the wealth and income of villagers. The village aims to rely on the spirit of revolutionary culture, the green environment, and Huang tea as the foundation of the industry. By developing characteristic tea industries, the village seeks to enrich its residents, benefit the collective, profit the enterprise, and maintain beautiful ecology.