Tan Aiyun
Liubao Tea's Legacy Lives On
In Cangwu County, Guangxi, the tea gardens are lush and green during late summer. Tan Aiyun operates a tea processing factory where workers manually fry fresh tea leaves, filling the workshop with the aroma of tea. Every day, they process over 7000 jin of fresh leaves into Liubao tea.
Tan Aiyun, hailing from Siliu Village 四柳村, Liubao Town 六堡镇, Cangwu County 苍梧县, has a deep connection with Liubao tea since childhood, growing up in a tea-producing area. Liubao tea has been refined over generations, and each step of its traditional production process is meticulously studied. The tea is unique in appearance, liquor color, taste, and brewability, making its sustainable development challenging.
As a traditional craft, Liubao tea faces challenges in breaking through the encirclement of mechanical equipment. Efficiency and cost are pressing concerns for traditional artisans. Tan Aiyun's approach involves advancing from two aspects: improving the craft and cultivating talent.
In 2009, Tan Aiyun established a 400-mu organic tea base in Changqun Mountain 长群山 to revitalize the Liubao tea industry. She united a vast number of farmers, strictly adhering to organic tea production regulations to enhance the tea production area's quality.
In 2017, she built a standardized tea processing factory with over 4000 square meters of floor space. This facility created an automated, continuous, and clean production line for traditional Liubao tea. The production line ensures tea leaves go from fresh to finished product "without touching the ground or hands," improving quality, market efficiency, and reducing production costs while being energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.
Tan Aiyun’s improved methods have perfectly combined traditional craft with mechanical equipment, not only enhancing market competitiveness and opening up the market but also driving a group of people to prosper in the tea industry. On one hand, Qinyi Company strongly supports all the town’s farmers in planting Liubao tea, not only purchasing the tea planted by farmers but also providing employment opportunities at her tea garden base each year, solving the employment issue for some local households that have been lifted out of poverty. On the other hand, Tan Aiyun does not keep her knowledge to herself but shares it to inherit and develop the Liubao tea industry.
To cultivate traditional tea-making experts, Tan Aiyun regularly trains her company’s employees and carries out “mentor-apprentice” activities, effectively leveraging the unique influence and charisma of expert talent to build a reserve team of highly skilled personnel. Through the implementation of a “talent strategy,” she has expanded the specialty industry of Liubao tea, helping more local people increase their income and become prosperous.
At the same time, Tan Aiyun tightly grasps school-enterprise cooperation, cultivating the younger generation in tea-making techniques. Over the years, Tan Aiyun has undertaken more than 1000 person-times of practical technical training, such as “planting practice” and “Liubao tea production,” for units including Nanning Vocational and Technical College, Guangxi Guilin Tea Science Institute, and Cangwu County Vocational School. She focuses on the transfer of agricultural science and technology achievements to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, especially to households that have been lifted out of poverty, providing agricultural science and technology training and technical transfer services.
It is worth mentioning that the cooperative she founded is the first and only Liubao tea professional cooperative in Cangwu County composed of rural women. Every year, it can drive more than 60 villagers to employment, radiating and driving 268 local farmers to plant over 2200 mu of Liubao tea. During the poverty alleviation period, it helped poor households increase their income by nearly CNY450,000.
Tan Aiyun has been honored with numerous titles: in 2012, her enterprise’s planting and processing base was designated as the “Guangxi Women’s Modern Agricultural Science and Technology Demonstration Base 广西巾帼现代农业科技示范基地”; in 2013, the Qinyi Cooperative under her enterprise was recognized as the “Guangxi Model Farmer’s Professional Cooperative 广西农民专业合作社示范社”; in 2018, Tan Aiyun was named one of the “Top Ten Planting Experts 十佳种植能手” at the first China Farmers’ Harvest Festival in Wuzhou City; in 2019, she was recognized as a representative inheritor of the regional intangible cultural heritage for Liubao tea making techniques; in 2020, the Qinyi Cooperative was awarded the “Top Ten Farmer’s Professional Cooperatives 十佳农民专业合作社” in Wuzhou City; and in 2021, it was ranked among “China’s Top 500 Cooperatives 中国500强合作社”.
“If I had to choose again, I would make the same choice. This is the heritage of our ancestors, and it must be passed down,” Tan Aiyun stated.