In pics: world’s best preserved ancient tea forest in SW China’s Yunnan

Photo of a traditional ethnic-minority village in the Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest, southwest China's Yunnan Province. (People's Daily Online/Hu Zunhui)

The World Heritage application for the cultural landscape of the Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest in southwest China's Yunnan Province officially got underway in June 2010. After more than a decade of efforts, it has entered a critical stage with relevant preparations now at a final stage and with an aim to moving everything forward in an orderly fashion.

The Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest occupies an area of 28,000 mu (about 1,900 hectares), having a tea-picking area of 12,000 mu (800 hectares) and a history of 1,828 years. It is currently the world's best preserved and oldest ancient tea forest, offering up the most prototypical tea-forest landscape, while providing significant cultural meaning and demonstrating a harmonious relationship between humankind and the natural landscape.

It has great value for conducting scientific research, landscaping, as well as cultural and production applications, having become recognized as a "Miracle of Tea Culture in Human History" and the "World's Museum for Tea Culture History and Nature".

For thousands of years, many generations among the ethnic groups residing on Jingmai Mountain have lived alongside the tea plants. People live right in the middle of the tea forests, and every family has its own tea plants and cultivates their own tea, presenting a beautiful picture of respect for nature and harmony between nature and humans.