The Legend of Rise and Fall Continues
The heyday of Liu Bao Tea exports, which began in the late Qing dynasty, came to a temporary halt with the fall of Guangzhou in 1938. Tea exports started to dwindle, and the once-busy ancient tea ship route fell silent during the war period. According to the “Wuzhou History and Chronicles,” after the second half of 1939, as the route from Wuzhou through Zhaoqing and Shaping to Guangzhou remained open, while the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River were embroiled in battle, local specialties from Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan, and Guangxi were transported via Wuzhou to various parts of Guangdong. Despite the need for goods to pass through the Japanese-occupied areas between Jiujiang and Shaping, where the river blockade was in place, the high profits encouraged merchants to risk their lives to cross, aided by military escort from the Nationalist government. This allowed local specialties, including tea, to complete their export circulation, and Liu Bao tea maintained a small volume of exports.
After entering the 1940s, the Second World War engulfed southern China and Southeast Asia, greatly affecting the operation of the ancient tea ship route. In late 1941, Hong Kong fell to the Japanese, who implemented a maritime blockade that impeded the export of Chinese Tea through Hong Kong, significantly impacting Liu Bao tea exports. Following this, major sales regions for Liu Bao tea such as Malaysia and Singapore were also occupied by the Japanese, effectively cutting off exports. The fall of Wuzhou in the summer of 1944 further brought local tea consumption to a near standstill. Under the dual pressures, the cultivation and production of Liu Bao tea suffered a devastating blow, as recorded in the “Guangxi Agricultural Communications”: “After the start of the war, transportation was obstructed, and the sales area shrank day by day. Most tea farmers could not sustain their livelihoods and abandoned tea cultivation for other pursuits. Thus, the tea industry declined… During the anti-Japanese war, foreign sales decreased year by year, with an average annual tea production of about 1,500 piculs.”
Group photo of employees constructing the Gongqing Hydropower Station of Liubao Commune on May 22, 1960. After the completion of this hydropower station, tea ship transportation on the Liubao River gradually ceased.
This situation persisted until after the founding of the People's Republic of China when the production of Liu Bao tea was revived, and the ancient tea ship route became active again. After the national implementation of unified purchase and sale of tea in 1954, tea from the Liu Bao region was concentrated and purchased in Wuzhou and processed by the Wuzhou Tea Factory before being exported to Southeast Asia by the Wuzhou branch company of the China Tea Corporation. “The Wuzhou branch of the China Tea Corporation was established in November 1953 and renamed in January 1954 as the Wuzhou office of the Guangxi branch of the China Tea Import and Export Corporation, specializing in the export business of Guangxi Liu Bao tea,” said Cai Yiming, deputy general manager of Wuzhou Zhongcha Tea Industry Co., Ltd.
From the mid-1950s onwards, with the recovery of tin mining in Southeast Asia and a surge in the number of local Chinese workers, the sales market for Liu Bao tea once again focused on Nanyang, and the operation of the ancient tea ship route reached another peak. However, unlike before, state-owned fleets like the Cangwu Public Transportation Fleet and the Guangxi Wuzhou Shipping Bureau had replaced private merchant fleets, and refined Liu Bao tea produced using modern techniques gradually took over the dominant position in exports from the semi-finished products.
In the late 1960s, with the construction of roads in Liubao Town, the section of the ancient tea ship route from Liubao to Jiangkou, Guangdong, gradually lost its importance. By the mid-to-late 1970s, after the construction of the Xizhong and Dong'anjiang hydropower stations, the waterway of Dong'anjiang was interrupted, bringing the water transport from Liubao to Jiangkou, Guangdong, to an end. In the late 1990s, with the decline of Wuzhou shipping and the failure of Liu Bao tea enterprises across Guangxi, the export of Liu Bao tea gradually shifted to road transport. Since then, the water transport route of the tea ship ancient route on the Xijiang River has become a fading sunset, but overseas water transport routes have continued to this day.
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