Guiyang and Gui'an kickstart tea season with strong growth

Tea gardens in Guiyang and Gui'an enter their harvest season. [Photo/Guiyang news network]

Tea gardens across Guiyang City and Gui'an New Area entered harvest season in late February, buzzing with the energetic pursuit of the season's first fresh yields. The first batch of spring tea was picked approximately 20 days earlier than in previous years, giving the region's tea industry a head start in the first quarter.

As a local pillar of the tea industry in Kaiyang county, Guizhou Meishiqi Selenium-Enriched Tea Co operates an ecological tea garden spanning over 500 mu (1.33 hectares), which influences and drives nearly 3,000 mu of additional tea cultivation in Nanlong township.

The company has achieved large-scale and standardized planting through land transfers, primarily cultivating varieties such as Jinmudan and Fuding Dabai to produce black, green, and oolong teas. Operating on an order-based production and market-oriented supply model, they sell their products as far as Fujian, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Shandong provinces.

Kaiyang's tea planting area this year has reached 68,600 mu. All tea gardens in the county were in full harvest by March 10. For the first quarter of this year, the county's spring tea output is projected to increase by more than 5 percent year-over-year, with a value of approximately 156 million yuan ($22.68 million).