Leveraging its vast tea farm and well-established tea industry chain, Mengzhuang Town in Zaozhuang City, east China's Shandong Province, has identified tea-themed educational tourism as a key emerging sector and has developed high-standard study-tour practice bases.
The tea farm is located in a tea park named Diyiming, which is a provincial ecological agricultural demonstration park and a national 3A-graded scenic spot in Mengzhuang Town. As the core area of Diyiming tea park, the farm has a planned land area of 2,000 mu (about 133.3 hectares) with a total investment of 200 million yuan.
A 3,000-square-meter tea culture exhibition hall, standardized tea-processing workshops and classrooms for study tour programs have been built in the park. A series of immersive courses have also been developed covering tea leaf picking, roasting, tea tasting and tea etiquette, forming a complete educational tour system integrating knowledge popularization, labor education and traditional culture inheritance education.
The park has optimized study tour routes, installed security facilities and arranged professional guides. It has a daily reception capacity of over 1,000 visitors and is capable of hosting over 30,000 study-tour participants annually. The educational tourism has largely stimulated consumption in tickets, experiencing activities and tea products, and also driven the growth of supporting services such as catering, accommodation and transportation. The integrated development of "study tour+culture and tourism+product sales" has become an important growth engine for local economy.
More than 600 mu (about 40 hectares) of tea plantations have been established by now with 15 premium tea varieties cultivated here, forming a complete industry chain covering seed breeding, planting, processing and sales. The farm harvests over 5,000 kilograms of tea leaves annually, generating an income of over 10 million yuan and creating more than 2,000 jobs.
Looking ahead, Mengzhuang Town has pledged to continue to enhance its tea tourism ecosystem covering tea industry, tea culture, and integrated development of tourism and education, striving to build a distinctive model for rural revitalization. (Edited by Li Xueqing with Xinhua Silk Road, lixueqing@xinhua.org)
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