Yongfu Tea Gardens 永福茶园

About Yongfu Tea Gardens

Yongfu lies in the interior of south-western Fujian and carries tens of thousands of mu of hill tea, described as the largest high-mountain oolong production base on the mainland. The planting began in 1995, when the Taiwanese tea farmer Xie Dongqing brought high-mountain oolong seed and picked Yongfu because its latitude and altitude are close to those of the Alishan tea district in Taiwan. Other Taiwanese growers followed. In 2006 the Fujian Zhangping Taiwan Farmers' Pioneer Park was set up with Yongfu town as its core area, approved by the provincial party committee and government, and two years later it was raised to national level with the approval of the agriculture ministry and the Taiwan Affairs Office, the second such national park in Fujian. As reported in 2020 the park held 76 Taiwanese enterprises, 48 of them high-mountain tea firms, producing more than 1,600 tonnes of tea a year with an output value of 720 million yuan and employing more than 600 Taiwanese farmers.

The cherry trees came later and were a deliberate addition to the tea. From 2000 Xie Dongqing brought close to ten thousand trees of several kinds from Taiwan, among them Fuji, Yoshino, mountain and yae cherries, and interplanted them across more than 1,300 mu of tea garden, so that the walkways between the tea run beneath the blossom. That plantation, the Taipin cherry blossom tea garden in Yongfu town, has been listed among China's ten cherry-viewing places and selected as one of Fujian's first outstanding creative tourism products and as a provincial leisure-agriculture demonstration site. Zhangping has held an annual cherry blossom culture and tourism festival since 2012. Flowering is seasonal and no source promises blossom at any given date.

What to look for

• The high-mountain oolong plantations spread across the hills around Yongfu town
• The Taipin cherry blossom tea garden, where cherries are interplanted across more than 1,300 mu of tea
• The mix of cherry varieties brought from Taiwan, including Fuji, Yoshino, mountain and yae cherries
• The walkways that run between the tea rows beneath the cherry trees
• The wider Zhangping Taiwan Farmers' Pioneer Park, whose core area is Yongfu town

Location & getting there

Getting to Yongfu Tea Gardens

Check the open visitor route and follow the site’s rules on distance, food and photography. Conservation areas may limit access beyond designated paths.

• Search for 永福茶园 with 龙岩市 and 漳平市.