Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er
Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Plantations
Ancient Tea Forests: Thousands of acres of tea trees, some over 1,000 years old, growing naturally within a forest ecosystem.
Traditional Villages: Nuogang (Dai) and Wengji (Blang) villages, featuring preserved wooden architecture and ancient religious shrines.
Tea Ancestor Worship: The "Tea Soul" (Numu) altars where locals perform annual ceremonies to honor the ancestors who first domesticated the tea trees.
Sea of Clouds: The mountain is famous for its stunning morning mist that blankets the valleys, leaving the peaks and tea forests appearing as floating islands.
This site is the world’s best-preserved example of ancient understory tea cultivation. Developed over a thousand years by the Blang and Dai peoples, the landscape features a unique three-layered ecosystem: high mountain trees for shade, ancient tea shrubs in the middle, and natural flora on the forest floor. This traditional "understory" method produces the world-renowned Pu’er tea while maintaining high biodiversity and a sacred connection between the local communities and their "Tea Ancestors."
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