China opens first museum of brick black tea

China's first museum of brick black tea opened Monday in the central Chinese city of Chibi to better spread tea culture.

The museum, with a 2,600-square-meter exhibition hall, started construction in April. It has a collection of more than 2,000 items related to the culture of brick tea, according to Dong Fangping, mayor of Chibi.

The city aims to build the museum into a center to launch tea culture education and to showcase the development of China's tea culture and its global influence.

Chibi, named "the origin of the ancient tea route" by the International Tea Committee in 2015, is famous for its brick tea, a kind of tea that is pressed into the shape of bricks at high temperatures.

In the 17th century, hundreds of thousands of merchants transported brick tea along the 6,500-km-long tea route that linked central China's Hubei province and Russia's St. Petersburg.