Lam Phong – Thanh Nien Newspaper
Over the years, the ancient Vietnamese tea tree has repeatedly faced dirty competition with all the tricks of the “tea enemy” from across the border.
Spread the news to buy tea wood with a surface of more than 50 cm, dig up the roots to pour salt for dead tea, bid high prices for tea fellers to make money quickly, cause the trees to fade, and recently bring a banner to spread under the Vietnamese tea tree. To receive yours
The awl masters
Ha Giang has the most significant ancient tea area in the country (about 25,000 hectares), located in the mountains bordering China (China), stretching from Dong Van, Yen Minh, Quan Ba down to the districts of Vi Xuyen, Hoang Su Phi, At that time, the communes of Nam Ty and Tung San (Hoang Su Phi) had great tea trees with two to three people hugging, over 30 m high, covered with moss, with new marks.
A banner in Chinese: “Cao Co Thuan – An ancient tree of local tea”, was rented to be hung at the Tung San tea tree.
As a border area, small-traffic trade is quite convenient, so tea made from ancient trees has mainly been exported across the border over the years. Tea makers across the border also look to Vietnam, rent workshops, or combine Vietnamese farmers to produce tea in areas such as Thuong Son, Phuong Tien, and Thanh Thuy, etc., or share with the lessor of the workshop to resell in the Vietnamese market.
The common point for traders who come to Vietnam to rent workshops is that the technical stages only stop at preliminary processing. Tea is when finished products are below the average quality of a sweet tea picked from ancient trees. If it is sun-dried tea (yellow tea), the method of withering is quite careless. Even without withering, buying is to put it in the iron right away and then put it in a jar, dry it directly for about one to two days to complete. Black tea is no better when it comes to sour taste and burnt smell, all the excellent cavalry in producing quality tea.
For a long time, experienced tea makers in the ancient Shan Tuyet line or in industrial tea production (tea grown in the midlands) said that this is the “trick” of tea makers from across the border. Phan Trong Nhat, an enterprise exploiting the ancient tea material area of Dien Bien since 2009, said: “Customers only buy from China. There are years when they come to rent the workshop according to the season (usually the spring crop because that season’s tea is easy to make – PV). They go to Vietnam to work and do not fully develop their techniques because they fear Vietnamese tea makers will learn from experience.”
For each tea crop, the workers teach differently, making Vietnamese tea makers wander around in the maze running after the market, meeting the needs of a lousy teacher without finding the strength of the raw material area to promote their own identity.
As for hired tea makers, delicious ingredients only need to be preliminarily processed, which is both easy to transport and shows Vietnamese people that the tea is not good, which is an opportunity for traders. Price of raw materials, collection at low prices. Across the border, they will process and upgrade to the best product because just hearing that tea is picked from more than 100 years old materials, the price is sky high. For example, ancient tea bought from Vietnam, especially the dried tea line, is already at VND 70,000 – 350,000 / kg when it has been preliminarily processed, even finished products. However, the price in the Chinese market is relatively low for the same old tree. Over 20 million VND, but buying the right source is not easy.
Occupy the tree – a new move of the “tea enemy.”
Having gone through the ancient tea regions of China, Thailand, and Laos…, the writer asserts that Vietnam owns the tallest tea trees in the world. Talking calculating tree age is not difficult to find on social networking sites. The ancient tea tree in Yunnan (China) with a large body and a hug has been confirmed to be more than a thousand years old, while the trees one person hugs in Vietnam are innumerable.
Father and son Hoang Khon rented a tea factory in the border area of Vi Xuyen, Ha Giang.
During a conversation with tea makers from China to Vietnam to rent a factory, father and son Hoang Khon (from Hung Nhai town across the border) said: “Ha Giang has many ancient teas, which are easy to harvest. It’s easy to gather materials, so every year, my nephew and I come to rent the workshop. The characteristics of Ha Giang tea are good after sweet, so I specialize in making red tea. The area I work next door doesn’t have a big tea tree like in Vietnam.”
Renting a workshop for co-production, even if you hide your profession, is still cooperative. Another popular “tea war” article is about price pressure. The easiest way to process ancient tea is dried tea. When tea is in season, just pick it, turn it, rub it and then dry it, or just dry it, crumple it and dry it, and Chinese traders will send centipede feet to all the regions with ancient tea trees and buy them at a low price. A pound of dry tea in 2021 Hoang Su Phi, bordering area, costs 120,000 VND/kg dry. The more remote the tea area, the price is pushed down to only 70,000 VND/kg dry. While also in Hoang Su Phi, the average old tea in factories with the zoning of raw materials, geographical indications, cooperatives… the price was 30,000 – 50,000 VND/kg fresh. In production, 4-5 kg of mint tea is 1 kg of dry tea. Enough to see how much traders strangled the price of tea.
By the end of 2021, due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the driving of tea spills to dumping no longer exists. Instead, the tea invaders devised a new trick: using banners and banners and finding the border tea areas with the giant trees. , stretch banners, and take pictures, all in Chinese. Thuong Son and Tung San tea areas of Ha Giang suffer from this condition. The tea trunks are more significant than two people hugging, except in the ancient forest, but in the regions associated with the village, such a tree size is huge and rare. Meeting the excellent tea tree, tea producers in Vietnam are afraid to provide information and images for fear that many people will come to influence and interfere with the raw material area. Still, tea invaders from across the border Bring banners and take pictures to affirm that the tea area is theirs to sell products at reasonable prices.
The trick of stretching signs to confirm the raw material area and taking pictures of sizeable original tea trees has only just rekindled, but many dangers because tea invaders buy cheap raw materials, now the plants are not theirs, no need to take care of them, but reputation, brand, and quality products, they eat enough. A new trick should be alarmed for border residents to be on the lookout for “tea enemies” in the border area.
Vietnam leads in ancient tea.
Compared to other countries in the world, Vietnam is leading in quantity, quality and distribution of ancient Shan Tuyet tea trees (Camellia Sinensis var. Shan, commonly referred to as “old tea”) of pure, original varieties. Native, growing naturally (primarily) in old-growth forests. Among the countries that own ancient tea, such as Vietnam, China, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar…, China consumes this tea the most.
Vietnam’s thousand-year-old tea roots were “received.”
In the late 2021 tea crop, border tea traders shared about an ancient tea brand called Cao Co Thuan, with a picture of a banner taken with a large and beautiful tea tree. The content is written: Cao Co Thuan – Ancient ancient herbal tea. “Cao Co Thuan” is the name of the tea production company, which also means: High mountain old tea, primaeval, pure. The entire banner translates to the Ancient tea garden land of Cao Co Thuan. While that land, that tea tree is in Tung San, Hoang Su Phi, Vietnam.
They are finding the owner of the tree (whose “tea enemies” self-identify) takes a long time. The tea forest grows near the top of the high mountain, more than ten hectares close together, the average size of one person to hug. Notably, the tea tree with the most prominent banner in that mountain area, compared with the recognized heritage tree, is more than 600 years old in Nam Ty. This tea tree is estimated to be over a thousand years old.
Tea tree owner Ly Thi Bang, of the White Dao ethnic group, said: “The tea garden my ancestors left behind, compared to the trees in the village, my house has more big trees, the journalist didn’t know that they were taking pictures. Where is the picture of my house tree?”