Written by: Liang Juan, Yao Youming
Posted on: September 25, 2018 | 
| 中文
Fucha Tea
A couple of years ago, Shi Xinshun, a villager of Shuangzhao Village, Jinggan Township of Jinyang County, Shaanxi Province, Northwest China, used to be a migrant worker, engaged in temporary domestic decoration far from his hometown. In those hardworking days, in his own words, he was exhausted, dirty and had an unsatisfactory income.
However, now, the Shuangzhao Village has become the Fucha Tea Town. Fucha, a kind of fully fermented black tea specially found in China, is highly enjoyed by the ethnic nomadic people, particularly of North West China and Central Asia. Shi's courtyard has changed to a farmer’s tea-house, hiding under tree shadows, with stone tea tables and tea-sets. tTe courtyard walls have been painted with water-color images, in which camel caravans loaded with commodities of tea march westward, traveling in the desert. “I hope there are going to be enough customers coming to my tea-house, but not too many, as I hope to live a content life,” Shi said.
Since historical times, no tea trees were grown towards the north of Qinling Mountains except for Jingyang, where Fucha Tea was specially produced. Shi Xinshun's hometown is not known to be a major production area for tea, but it is where Fucha Tea undergoes processing, packing and selling, and it has been an important passage for the Tea-and-Horse Trade along the ancient Silk Road. When officially purchased tea arrives at Jingyang, most of it is fermented, congressed and made into Fucha Tea Bricks and sold to areas like Northwest China and countries in Central Asia through the Silk Road. Fucha Tea is not only a commodity of the traditional business exchanges, but has remained a daily necessity for ethnic minorities living in the border areas of China and along the Silk Route.
During the processing, Eurotium Cristatum may occur and get attached to the tea leaves which are like golden flowers, and the quality of the tea bricks is judged by the amount of Eurotium present in the Fucha Tea. The high quality ones permeate aroma full of cristatum in an orange-red colored tea soup with a long-lingering smell and after-taste, in addition to its positive effects for digestion. Since olden times, Fucha Tea produced in Jingyang was especially welcomed by nomadic people, whose diet heavily depended upon meat and cheese. Sometimes, Fucha Tea bricks were even worth the value of horses in trade, and were praised as “Treasure Tea.”
In recent years, with the social and economic development of China, the domestic consumers care more and more about the quality of their life and the cultural connotations of their daily consumption mateiral. Fucha Tea, as a common item for consumption and connotation with traditional Chinese cultural traits, has witnessed a significant development opportunity.
In order to build the Fucha Tea Old Town, a delicately designed and developed commercial project started its operations on August 19th, 2015 at Shuangzhao Village under the joint investment of Jinghe New Town and Jingyang County. With clean streams wandering through the old-fashioned town, folk houses and residents on the sides, this little town has managed to attract streams of tourists coming to spend their vacations at local special tea-houses and restaurants.
“The number of tourists coming here is 10 times more than what I had expected,” Shi said. At the end of 2014, with his request, his wife went to Jingyang County for a specialization course in tea making. His family also invested about one million RMB yuan to transform his courtyard, demolishing the old walls and building up a new tea house. “Taking advantage of Fucha Tea Town, I'm sure that our village will embrace a great opportunity for development.”
Shi taught himself about tea and tea-making. When customers come in, he would actively and enthusiastically introduce them to the historical legends and celebrity stories about Fucha Tea. Fu Hongzheng, a tourist from Xi'an City, capital of Shaanxi Province, now comes to Shi's teahouse regularly with friends, and said that with the narratives and passion shared by Shi, he found that Fucha Tea and the teahouse has been enriched with everlasting vigor and unique evolution, which is the most amazing part of Fucha Tea Town and its teahouses.
Wei Jinjuan, chairman of Fucha Tea Town Cultural Industry Group. Co. Ltd, said , “Whether it is green tea, Puer tea, white tea, black tea or Wolong tea, they can all be further processed and cultivated with Eurotium Cristatum, and made into varieties of Fucha Tea. In the stores at the Town, varieties of Fucha Tea are sufficient, and it is difficult for customers to choose from among Jasmine Fucha Tea, Fucha Tea-bags, or other varieties.”
According to Zhang Gechao, deputy Director-General of Golden Leaves Tea Industry Company, 80% of Fucha Tea production companies have set up their direct sale stores at the Town, and the traditional and new-style Fucha Tea products have stable and strong demand in big metropolitans, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, etc. They have sold to the areas along the routes of the Old Silk Road, having received favorable comments from customers inside the industry, as well as common consumers.
More than 200 local young people have returned to their hometowns from China’s coastal areas where they were migrant workers, and have joined the development of Shuangzhao Village in the past three years. Fucha Tea Town has casted off its recession and has been rated as an AAA scenic zone, and a model of beautiful and comfortable countryside development program of China, where every family enjoys its tea business-related income.
Like the strong liquor, the more aged they are, the more precious the tea-bricks will be. A Fucha Tea Research Centre has been established to attract more and more investment and stimulate innovative development, as well as to establish the industry standards of Fucha Tea production via introduction of a bank for Fucha Tea. “We are now discussing with e-commerce giants, such as Jindong and Alibaba, to establish storage houses of Fucha Tea here. We believe that investment and storage of Fucha Tea would yield high profits,” Wei Jinjuan said.
Right now, the Fucha Tea Town preserves and promotes the Chinese tea culture tradition of treating guests with tea and making friends through it. “In the future, the town will be expanded to a cluster of Fucha tea production and processing, wholesale and retail, scientific research and innovation, culture and entertainment, bio-agriculture, leisure and holiday economy and a town of tea culture, just like the golden flowers shining along the Silk Road.”
Translated by Wu Jinying
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