Growing tea is bitter, it is difficult to harvest tea, and tea making is tired. Witnessing the hardships of her parents, she had secretly vowed that she would definitely go out of the mountain, no longer face the loess and turn her back to the sky, staring at the tea leaves for a living.
Go out to study, marry away from home, and find employment across provinces. Just as she realized her childhood dream step by step, the call of her father and the prospect of her hometown made her return to her hometown with nostalgia and entrepreneurial enthusiasm, and inherit her father's business as the "second generation of tea".
Refining high-end tea, focusing on new retail, and developing tea tourism. With new vision and new ideas, she returned to her hometown for 3 years, led more than 600 farmers in the cooperative to innovate and develop innovative development methods and business formats, and promoted the output value of tea in the cooperative from more than 10 million yuan to 60 million yuan.
She is Wang Huaxin, the "tea girl" of the Three Gorges who returned to her hometown to start a business. She said that the times are changing, the modern countryside is a promising land, a field full of hope, and traditional agriculture can also become a "tide maker" that leads entrepreneurship and innovation.
Good tea
Xiling Gorge after the summer rains, green mountains such as Dai, rivers and rivers, clouds around the mountains.
Located at the head of the Three Gorges Dam head in Xujiachong Village, Taipingxi Town, Yiling District, Yichang City, Hubei Province, on the Shuangshi Ridge, dozens of acres of contiguous tea gardens are spectacular, tea trees that have just experienced rain are growing freely, and the delicate tea leaves emit a hint of fragrance, making people feel refreshed.
"You can't pick tea with your fingernails, you have to use ingenuity to gently break it." Wang Huaxin, 34, is doing a webcast in a tea garden. Although there are not many netizens who are "watching", she takes her mobile phone to the tea garden to shoot according to the requirements of netizens, carefully introduces various tea knowledge and her own products, for fear of snubbing netizens.
Xiazhou tea has been famous since ancient times. When introducing the origin of tea and the advantages and disadvantages of the tea produced in the "Tea Classic", Lu Yu, a tea saint of the Tang Dynasty, said: "Shannan is on the gorge state, Xiangzhou and Jingzhou are subordinate, Hengzhou is down, and Jinzhou and Liangzhou are down." The "Xia Prefecture" in the text is the Yiling District of yichang City and its surrounding areas.
Yichang Yiling District Agricultural and Rural Bureau relevant person in charge of the introduction, now Yiling District tea industry is booming with a rapid trend, the whole region of tea planting area of more than 230,000 acres, the annual output of tea nearly 30,000 tons, high mountain clouds out of good tea, low hills out of morning tea, here is the national tea advantage industry area and Hubei Province characteristic agricultural products key base.
As a native of the Three Gorges, Wang Huaxin has been dealing with tea since he was a child.
"When I was a child, my grandmother used to take me to the tea garden, and she picked tea, and I picked wild fruits in the woods next to the tea garden." Wang Huaxin told reporters that her ancestral house was in Xiwan Village, the former Taipingxi Town, before the Three Gorges Reservoir Area was filled with water, the ancestral house was in front of the wide Yangtze River, and behind the house was a continuous tea garden. At that time, the fresh leaves picked at home were used to make the raw materials for the famous tea "Xia Zhou Bifeng", and every year during the tea season, tea vendors came to the door, and the fresh leaves were immediately snapped up.
Tea "bitter"
Wang Huaxin said that although the tea market is good, it is very hard to grow tea, pick tea, and make tea. Elders often go out to pick tea before dawn, busy until noon to go home, too late to cook and eat, tea picking back to quickly spread green, killing green, night also have to knead, shape, dry and Titian overnight, a busy day can only eat two meals.
"At that time, people used to tell me that if I read more books, I wouldn't have to farm when I came out in the future." For the advice of the elders, Wang Huaxin seemed to understand it when she was a child, until she was eleven or twelve years old, she personally felt that it was bitter to grow tea, difficult to harvest tea, tired in making tea, and determined to "jump out of the farm".
Originally, with the construction of the Three Gorges Project in full swing, around 1998, Wang Huaxin's family emigrated to Xujiachong Village. After the emigration, all the land, houses, and mountains and forests in the family sank to the bottom of the river, and after the new relocation to Xujiachong Village, there was no land and mountain forest distribution in the village. At this time, Wang Huaxin's father's township enterprise was also relocated and restructured, and his father lost his job and the family's livelihood was difficult.
Wang Huaxin's father, Wang Yunping, said that considering the special situation of the family, the village gave a minimum guarantee at that time. You can support a family, but you can't rely on a low security deposit. With his work experience in township enterprises, he borrowed money to buy a tricycle and began to cross the mountains to farmers' homes to buy tea, and then processed and sold.
When it comes to holidays, Wang Huaxin has also become a small follower on the way to collect tea from his parents.
"Tea is very good, and the harvest of tea depends on grabbing." Wang Huaxin said that every time she went to a tea garden, she would greet the farmers warmly, help pick tea leaves, and carry bamboo baskets, the purpose of which was to warm up with the farmers and ensure that the tea could be sold to herself. When she put away the tea leaves and went home, her parents were busy making tea, so she had to cook and clean up the housework. Almost every day had to be busy until about ten o'clock in the evening to rest, and parents had to be busy almost all night.
"I was so tanned and my fingers were full of tea dirt, and I felt so tired and tired every day, and I swore that I wouldn't do tea when I grew up."
Tea "Thoughts"
In order to realize his wishes, Wang Huaxin worked hard and was finally admitted to college. After graduation, Wang Huaxin successively worked in Yichang, Hubei province, Chengdu, Sichuan and other places. Leaving hometown, getting married and having children, everything is step by step, moving towards the dream of childhood, Wang Huaxin's life trajectory seems to be getting farther and farther away from tea.
In the days when Wang Huaxin was away, her parents' tea industry became bigger and bigger. His father, Wang Yunping, led the establishment of Yichang Shuangshiling Tea Cooperative, established a tea processing factory, and set up a self-operated store, creating a tea enterprise integrating tea planting, processing and sales. The area of the tea garden of the cooperative members once reached 5,000 mu, and the standardized factory building was more than 4,000 square meters.
The scale of the industry is getting bigger and bigger, and the pressure on Wangyunping is also increasing.
Wang Yunping said that the tea factory mainly does low-end refined tea exports, each kilogram of tea can only sell for a few yuan, the best can only sell more than ten yuan a pound, the profit margin is only less than 5%. Coupled with the long payback period and fierce competition among peers, the stalls are getting bigger and bigger, but the money is earned less and less. One year, there was a flash flood, the factory was flooded, and the direct economic loss reached hundreds of thousands of yuan. "I want to change, but I can't find a way out, and sometimes I really feel like I can't do it."
On the afternoon of April 24, 2018, General Secretary Xi Jinping came to Xujiachong Village, Taipingxi Town, Yiling District, Yichang City, Hubei Province. "The arrival of the general secretary has given us great encouragement, and we are full of confidence to go home and start a business." Wang Huaxin said that as a daughter, she should share the worries of her parents, and as a communist party member, she should serve the tea farmers.
Tea aroma
With nostalgia and entrepreneurial enthusiasm, in June 2018, Wang Huaxin returned to his hometown Xujiachong Village as the head of the cooperative and tea factory.
As soon as she took office, after finding out her family background and receiving training organized by the agricultural sector, she quickly changed her product sales positioning, focusing on the sale of low-end refined tea in the past to developing high-end famous tea and consolidating wholesale sales of low-end mao tea.
At the same time, combined with market demand, change the packaging strategy, abandon the "five big and three thick" large packaging, and focus on the exquisite appearance of "small cans of tea".
"When the black tea is just brewed, the soup color is bright and bright, but as the temperature decreases, the phenomenon of 'cold and muddy' occurs, which is high-quality black tea." Walking into Wanghuaxin's handmade tea experience hall, in front of the elegant tea set, the tea artist is brewing the black tea produced by the cooperative, brewing, viewing, tasting, the tea artist is the head of the way, the tourists listen to it with relish, and people can't help but want to pick some tea leaves to buy home when they leave.
Wang Huaxin said that the added value of tea is reflected in the brand's awareness and sense of experience. To this end, on the one hand, she led the cooperative to actively join the local public brand and seek brand development.
On the other hand, she actively carried out online live streaming with goods, organized "tea art study tour" and "handmade a new pot of tea" and other experience activities, so that consumers put on straw hats, lifted bamboo baskets, walked into tea gardens, and personally experienced the hardships and wonderfulness of tea picking and roasting tea.
A series of initiatives have brought tangible results. In 2018, the annual output value of the cooperative was only more than 10 million yuan, and by 2020, despite the impact of the epidemic, the output value of the cooperative increased to more than 60 million yuan, and through the promotion of the "company + base + farmer" model, the cooperative has steadily driven 630 members.
"It seems that the path of specialization, refinement and marketization is right, and we can be more effective in rural revitalization." Wang Huaxin said. (Wang Zichen, Deng Nan)