A Custom Goes International: How We Domesticate Excessive-High quality Tea
Tea consumption in China is rather more than simply having fun with a comforting beverage. Now we have a phrase for it: chá yì, which suggests “the artwork of ingesting tea.” It displays how a lot it means to us: it’s a custom, a ceremony, and a ritual. My goal is to copy that cherish for tea in my enterprise.
My title is Jialing Ding, and I’m the final supervisor of Kangyuan Chinese language Natural Drugs Planting Cooperative, situated in southeast China, in Nanping, Fujian.
I’m a third-generation tea farmer; my household has been planting tea leaves for greater than a century. Whenever you inherit your ancestors’ career as I did, you wish to be sure you not solely develop the enterprise however you proceed to boost its high quality requirements whereas honoring its legacy.
The Artwork of Rising and Cultivating Tea
I principally develop black tea and inexperienced tea leaves, and although there are numerous tea farms in China, I’m assured to say that my tea leaves are particular.
Three issues set them aside:
- Our geographic location
- The setting
- The soil
My plantation is situated in a mountain vary, utterly surrounded by forests, and that makes the soil extraordinarily fertile. Subsequently, we’re capable of produce leaves that style higher and are excessive in polyphenols, a micronutrient treasured for its antioxidant properties.
There’s one other part essential to the standard of the tea we harvest right here: the human care we put into each leaf. Many make use of machine selecting, however right here all of our leaves are handpicked. This tea plantation offers work to the farmers and laborers within the surrounding space.
When harvest season rolls round in Might or June, we’ll make use of round 1,200 folks; when it’s low season, they arrive to assist with different duties. We’re proud to supply employment alternatives for the group.
How We Fastidiously Choose Our Tea Leaves
The selecting method employed by our employees – which its principal attribute is that it doesn’t harm the leaves – is handed on orally from one technology to the subsequent. They be taught it by way of phrase of mouth handed down from their ancestors. We put our coronary heart and souls into the tea: each batch of tea leaves we harvest comes from exhausting work and keenness, and the superb high quality is our reward.
However love doesn’t imply negligence. Our complete manufacturing course of follows a strict process, and that’s additionally is among the contributing elements to our output. First, the leaves undergo withering, then rolling, then fermentation, then drying, then sorting, and then you definately get the top product. Our tea leaves are offered all around the nation, and our partnership with Herbalife Diet has allowed our tea to go international.
Partnering with Herbalife Diet
Herbalife Diet has very excessive requirements: they work solely with high-quality and high-end merchandise, which is why I’m very honored to have been chosen by them as a provider of tea leaves. Due to this partnership, I’m producing tea that’s loved by thousands and thousands all over the world.
For me, it’s very transferring to assume how many individuals are at the moment having fun with a dialog or a soothing second round a cup of tea that began as a seed in my plantation.