The 13th Fuding White Tea Picking Festival & 2024 White Tea Trade Conference Grandly Opens!
On March 28, the 13th Fuding White Tea Picking Festival & 2024 White Tea Trade Conference grandly opened in Fuding City. Friends from all walks of life, including leaders at all levels, experts and scholars, and representatives from the tea industry, cultural circles, and media, gathered in the hometown of Chinese white tea to enjoy fine tea, discuss tea affairs, and celebrate the grand event. Over the past thirteen years, the Fuding White Tea Picking Festival has not only become a festival for Fuding tea farmers but also a representative of Chinese tea celebrations due to the prosperous development of the white tea category.
At this year's 13th Fuding White Tea Festival, a special Fuding White Tea Carnival was held, including tea company exhibitions, tea-related product displays, interactive games, and cultural tourism promotions. Activities such as tea brewing around a stove, white tea competitions, new white tea drinks, and interactive games offered "108 kinds" of new experiences with white tea. Here, visitors could see Fuding white tea spanning ancient and modern times, and also witness its vibrant future.
The annual Fuding White Tea Picking Festival is a concentrated showcase of the achievements of Fuding's tea industry development and a rich enhancement of Fuding's tea culture life. It displays not only a grand tea-picking festival but also a vibrant and hopeful future for the tea industry. Today, the Fuding White Tea Picking Festival has become one of the most influential tea cultural feasts in the country and one of Fuding's most representative cultural brands, as well as an important platform for mutual learning and mutual promotion in the national tea industry.
This year's festival innovatively adopted a "Fubao" (blessing report) activity as the main linkage, with "tea tourism + tea services + tea-related products" as the carriers. Using "tea" as a clue, it created an immersive city garden party themed "Fuding White Tea" throughout the entire city. 80 designated tea houses were opened to visitors for free drinks during the festival, and a large number of "tea-related products" were distributed, fully demonstrating the warm welcome of all Fuding people to tea friends across the country. For Fuding, the charm of white tea is not only a wealth-generating industry, a brand, or a beverage suitable for all ages; it has become a symbol of the city, a driving force for the parallel development of the city's culture, tourism, sports, consumption, and other sectors.
Fuding white tea is one of the six major Chinese tea categories, representing white tea. It is a lightly fermented tea with characteristics such as excellent variety, unique origin, natural processing, distinctive health benefits, and the ability to be stored and aged. It is processed through two main steps: withering and drying. The entire production process involves no rolling or frying, maximizing the retention of nutrients and activity in the tea leaves, creating the qualities of "mill fragrance, honey flavor, enduring fragrance, and natural health" in Fuding white tea. There is a folk saying: "one-year tea, three-year medicine, seven-year treasure." Its significant health benefits such as reducing heat and inflammation, and maintaining health and beauty, are well-known. New tea has a sweet and refreshing beauty, while aged tea has a mellow and sweet charm, widely cherished by people. Based on differences in fresh leaf raw materials and processing techniques, Fuding white tea is classified into: Baihao Yinzhen (Silver Needle), Baimudan (White Peony), Shoumei (Longevity Eyebrow), Gongmei (Tribute Eyebrow), and new process white tea. According to statistics, in 2023, Fuding's total tea garden area was 362,000 mu (about 60,000 acres), with a harvestable area of about 305,000 mu (about 50,800 acres), achieving a total tea output of 32,000 tons. The comprehensive output value of the city's tea industry was 15.013 billion yuan, an increase of 8%, and tea enterprises paid taxes of 178 million yuan. With a brand value of 6.07 billion yuan, Fuding white tea has been ranked among the "Top Ten Chinese Tea Regional Public Brand Values" for 14 consecutive years, effectively driving income growth for 380,000 tea-related personnel.
