Guizhou county uses tea to escape poverty

A few days ago, two teapots with exquisite traditional Chinese patterns made by the Palace Museum caught people's attention online.

The tea leaves sitting deep in the pots come from an anti-poverty project supported by car maker Geely in Leishan county, a plateau mountain area in Southwest China's Guizhou province.

Geely invested 20 million yuan ($2.9 million) to build an automatic tea production line, 2,700 mu (180 hectares) of new tea garden space and tea-themed tourism support facilities in the county in 2018. This is meant to empower the local tea industry, said Jiang Hao, assistant general manager of Geely's Guiyang branch and chairman of the tea factory supported by Geely.

Jiang made the comments at a news conference in the town of Wangfeng on May 31. The province's terrain and weather are quite suitable for tea growing, Jiang said, but the tea's value is still low due to a lack of preparatory skills and brand awareness.

Geely's support project will help Guizhou's tea industry offset these shortcomings, Jiang added.

Currently, Geely has cooperated with Palace's online store, Netease, TikTok and Bytedance to promote the tea, and hired tea-making masters to guide the factory in preparation methods.

Leishan is a mountainous area with an average altitude of 1,400 meters. As a county developing the tea and tourism industries, it has escaped poverty in 2018 and reached a poverty headcount ratio lower than 2 percent, said Li Shaoxiong, the county's deputy head.