Master of tieguanyin tea passes on his skills
Chen Lianggu is a master of tieguanyin, a premium variety of Chinese oolong tea, who lives in Gande town, in Anxi county, Quanzhou, a city in East China's Fujian province.
Chen began working in the tea industry at the age of 18 and after years of learning and hard work, he has accumulated rich tea-making experience and skills.
Chen Lianggu carefully processes tieguanyin tea. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
Due to his love of tea, Chen found several wild tea forests. After carefully processing, using the traditional production techniques of Anxi tieguanyin, he has made a tea with excellent quality called Yeshi tea.
Chen is the official municipal inheritor of the art of making tieguanyin tea. He invested more than 200,000 yuan ($29,436) to set up the Chen Lianggu Tea Master Studio, where he has taught his skills to over 6,700 people.
Chen Lianggu goes in search of wild tea forests, in order to make a special tea called Yeshi tea. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
He was hired by Anxi College of Tea Science and Anxi Tea Vocational School and has passed on his craft in more than 200 classes in various tea-producing towns in Anxi and Yongchun counties, benefiting more than 13,000 tea farmers.
In 2015, Chen also published a book at his own expense about tea making skills, providing it to tea farmers free of charge, so that they could inherit his skills.
In April 2018, a group of tea lovers from 19 countries across the world came to Chen's tea garden to learn tea making skills.
Chen Lianggu and tea farmers carefully pick tea leaves. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
In addition to enthusiastically teaching his craft, he also established the Laogu Tea Professional Cooperative and served as its chairman. More than 100 tea farmers and more than 1,000 mu (66.67 hectares) of tea gardens joined the cooperative in Gande town.
Through the establishment of a one-stop tea production and sales system, the cooperative has helped the tea farmers increase their earnings and has served as a model for the development of local industries.
