[Xinhua/Wei Peiquan]

You Yuqiong, a resident of Xingcun (a village in Wuyishan, a city in Southeast China's Fujian Province), is the only woman inheritor of the craft of making Wuyi Rock Tea, which is on China's list of intangible cultural heritage. Three decades ago, You took over the tea plant run by her father, You Yongsheng. Given You Yuqiong and her employees' tremendous efforts to promote the traditional tea-making craft, the small plant has evolved into a leading tea-production enterprise in Fujian.

Wuyishan is not only the birthplace of oolong and black tea, but is also the hometown of rock tea. Wuyishan's time-honored tea culture has been integrated into residents' lives. The city boasts nearly 150,000 mu (10,000 hectares) of tea gardens, which produce more than 20,000 tons of raw tea every year. The local tea industry has grown into Wuyishan's pillar industry, which, in turn, has helped to promote the city's rural revitalization.

You Yuqiong has become known far and wide for her excellent tea-making skills. Making Wuyi Rock Tea involves several complicated procedures, including picking and baking the tea leaves, and then drying the leaves in the sun. Numerous people worldwide have been fascinated by the unique charm of Wuyi Rock Tea, which is not only as fragrant as green tea, but also tastes as mellow as black tea. When she recalls the many sweet, and bitter, experiences in starting and running her business, You Yuqiong says she believes all of her efforts have been worthwhile.

To help the villagers improve their lives, You Yongsheng in 1985 signed a contract with Xingcun Town (where his village lies) to run the tea plant. You Yongsheng hired You Yuqiong to provide support services (including preparing meals for workers) to the plant's employees. "Given the poor production conditions at that time, making rock tea was a miscellaneous, toilsome job. To produce high-quality tea, craftspeople (in our plant) often worked around the clock," recalls You Yuqiong. The hard work left many of the craftsmen feeling tired. However, the strong-willed woman persevered, and she worked diligently, under the guidance of skilled craftspeople (in the plant), to improve her craft-making skills. Eventually, she became a master of the craft.

You Yuqiong's efforts to improve her ability to create wonderful tea, and to develop her business, have paid off, as the tea produced by her enterprise has been well received by customers across the country. In 1998, You Yuqiong established Jinfo (Golden Buddha) Rock Tea Research Institute (in Xingcun Town). She has since employed technical experts to develop new varieties of tea, and they have yielded fruitful results; for example, through unremitting efforts, they developed the Golden Buddha Tea, a new variety of Wuyi Rock Tea, in 2008.

Fang Zhou, the only son of You Yuqiong, returned home in 2016, shortly after he graduated from University of Warwick (in UK), with a master's degree in data science. Within a short time, he picked up the "baton" (of promoting the development of his family's tea-making craft) from his mother. During the past several years, Fang has put much effort into improving his skills of running the enterprise, and into promoting Wuyi Rock Tea worldwide. At present, he is trying to standardize the data, collected during the tea-production process, and to create data models, through which You Yuqiong's enterprise can achieve data governance.

During the past several decades, about 100 people have apprenticed under You Yuqiong, so they could learn how to make Wuyi Rock Tea. Some of her apprentices have become technical heads in You Yuqiong's tea plant, and others have established their own tea enterprises. "As an inheritor of the tea-making craft, I felt obliged to pass on the craft to future generations, and to do something to promote the traditional craft worldwide," You Yuqiong concludes.

(Source: Xinhua/Women of China English Monthly March 2023 issue)