5 Acres of Wild Tea Forest Get Me Out Of Poverty

On August 18, Enshi Daily reported the story of Wang Shijie, a poor household in Badong County, who got out of poverty due to tea. The following is the oral content, and the full text is reproduced as follows: 

Original newspaper digital view link: http://szb.enshi.cn/esrb/content/202008/18/content_36489.html

At 6 o'clock in the morning on August 11, I drove a tricycle to my hometown 7 kilometers away and weed 0.6 Acres of konjac field.

It takes less than 10 days to weed and fertilize every year. With a bumper harvest in three years, 4 Mu of konjac can earn 30,000 yuan.

My name is Wang Shijie, and I am a poor household with a registered card. In 2018, our family of four moved from the hillside of Xiaoshennongjia Village, Yanduhe Township, Badong County to a resettlement site under the mountain. We lived in a new house of 100 square meters with three bedrooms and two living rooms without paying a cent. The front door is connected by a cement road and it is only 10 minutes away from the village clinic.

Badong County↑

I was born in the 1950s. I had eaten grass roots and leaves, and lived with my parents in thatched sheds. When i was 29, married and started a family. Carried thin stone slabs from the river valley to build a house. I could only carry it once a day, and it took six months to build a wedding house.

My wife Li Changying and I cultivate 1.67 acres of land, feed five or six pigs a year, and raise one child and one daughter. After a year of hardship, there was no savings.

In 2019, a piece of "pie" hit us: wild tea can sell for money! My family has 5 acres of mountain forest, and the forest is full of wild tea trees.

Badong County↑

In March 2019, Fujian Zhengshantang Tea Company came to Badong to develop the "Badong Red" series of black tea. The village party secretary Wang Shi first knew that wild tea from Xiaoshennongjia was a treasure, and that the original wild tea was a high-quality raw material for making black tea.

After Wang Shixian buildinging connection, Zhengshantang Tea Company came to the village to inspect the wild tea forest. Collect fresh leaf samples, after testing, they contain selenium, green and pollution-free.

After getting the wild tea test report, Wang Shixian was as happy as he had won the prize. He led the villagers into the mountains, counted wild tea trees, and found out a total of 200 acres of wild tea forests. At the same time, the villagers were organized to protect and manage the tea trees, and set the rules: no cut down thick trees, no fertilizer, clean the weeds around the tea trees, and shade the branches.

Badong Villagers Picking Tea ↑

In less than two months, the villagers began to pick wild tea. My wife and I collected 200 kilograms of fresh leaves in 10 days and sold them for 12,000 yuan.

The 78 relocation households in the village all went to their own mountain forests to pick wild tea, and the average household income increased by nearly 8,000 yuan. Wang Shixian worked as both a technician and purchaser, and the fresh leaves were transported into the tea workshop of Zhengshantang Tea Company.

This year's spring tea picking season, my wife and I brought dry food and teapots, and went into the mountains in the dark. We picked 270 kg of fresh leaves in half a month, and 17,000 yuan was put in our pockets. With 5 acres of nearly 3,000 wild tea trees, I became a big wild tea farmer in the village, and I can no longer hinder the village’s well-off.

At a mass meeting in the village not long ago, Wang Shi first broke the good news: the wild tea in the village was crowned with the name "Zhengshantang Badong Red Xiao Shennongjia Wild Tea", and won the prize in the 2019 World Black Tea Product Quality Selection Activity Product quality gold medal, only two black teas in the province won the gold medal. This is a gift from nature to Xiao Shennongjia Village, and it is also our confidence to take off the poor hat.