Jingmai Mountain

The world's first tea-themed World Heritage site, where vast thousand-year-old tea forests coexist with ancient Blang and Dai villages, and Wengji Village wakes to morning mist and seas of clouds.

Jingmai Mountain is in Huimin Town, Lancang Lahu Autonomous County, Pu'er, Yunnan Province, at about 1,100–1,600 m, bordering Menghai County in Xishuangbanna. More than a thousand years ago the ancestors of the Blang and Dai peoples began growing tea under the forest canopy, creating an ancient tea-forest ecosystem where “tea grows in the forest and forest grows among the tea.” Around 800 hectares of old tea forest and more than a dozen traditional villages survive today. In 2023 the “Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu'er” was inscribed as a World Cultural Heritage site — the world's first with tea as its theme.

Areas to explore: Jingmai Mountain is divided into two main areas, Jingmai Village (mainly Dai) and Mangjing Village (mainly Blang). The officially recommended route runs east to west and north to south: Manggeng Viewing Platform → Mengben → Old Wine House → Jingmai Dazhai and the Great Golden Pagoda → Nuogan Old Village → Wengji Old Village → the King Bee Tree in Upper Mangjing → the Tea Ancestor Temple on Aileng Mountain → the Manghong Octagonal Pagoda, with the Dapingzhang old tea forest along the way. About 20 km to the north is Laodabao, a Lahu music village.

Seasons: Mar–Apr is spring tea season, when you can pick and process tea, and mid-April brings the Blang Sankang Tea Ancestor Festival and the Dai Water-Splashing Festival; Nov–Mar has the most sunny days, with the most reliable seas of clouds in the early morning; Jun–Sep is the rainy season, with muddy mountain roads and frequent mist. Getting there: it's about 2 hours by road from Lancang Jingmai Airport and about 3 hours from Jinghong in Xishuangbanna; mountain roads are winding, so self-drive or hire a car. Stay 2 nights in a guesthouse in Wengji, Nuogan or Jingmai Dazhai and explore at a slow pace. Tips: respect local ethnic customs; smoking and breaking branches off tea trees are prohibited in the old tea forests; when buying tea, learn to tell old-tree tea from terrace-garden tea.

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