[Poverty Alleviation Through a Lens] Tea farmers busy themselves with picking leaves
p.china.org.cn, June 1, 2017 Adjust font size:
A tea farmer holds tea in her hands. [Photo by Chen Shengpeng]
The old tea garden in Jinxing Village, Yundou Town, Shiquan County, in Ankang—a city of north China’s Shaanxi Province—lies amid swaths of lush green mountain forests. Every newly protruding tea shoot and leaf, delicate and charming, is brimming with new life, every branch and cluster weaving new stanzas of nature’s poem.
Groups of three to five friends will hike to the mountaintop meeting spot, tea baskets on their backs, and will pack their bamboo panniers with the fragrant scents of fresh tea. Skies aglow with the warmth of the sunset, tea farmers work tirelessly tending to the green leaves with the day’s harvest struggling to fit in their baskets. The construction of a new tea garden off in the background is almost complete; and before long, this place will become another.
Together, farmers gather at tea collection area, chosen by the village cooperative, and convert their day’s harvest into real, tangible gains. Satisfaction and happiness are effused on the faces of all.