Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er

Overview

About

Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er (普洱景迈山古茶林文化景观) was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023 as a cultural site.

Travel tips

Getting there: Jingmai Mountain is in Huimin town, Lancang Lahu Autonomous County, Pu'er, Yunnan. Most visitors go first to Kunming or Pu'er, then travel by road: from Pu'er city or from Jinghong in Xishuangbanna it is several hours by road. The mountain road is winding, and many people hire a car or drive.

Villages: the property includes Dai and Blang villages around Jingmai and Mangjing, such as Nuogan, Mengben, Manghong, Wengji and the upper and lower Mangjing villages, set among the tea forests.

Wengji and Mangjing: Wengji is a ridge-top village with traditional Blang timber houses. At Mangjing, the Mangjing Ancestor Tea Temple honours Pa Ai Leng, the Blang tea ancestor.

The tea forests: old tea trees grow beneath the forest canopy beside the villages, from a hundred to several hundred years old. Walk them with a villager; do not enter protected areas alone.

Tea culture: local households offer tea tasting and sell tea. The spring harvest around Qingming is the busiest time, and there is an autumn picking too.

Time: two days and one night covers the main villages and tea forests; a night on the mountain gives you the morning cloud sea.

Season: March and April is the spring tea season; the rainy season from June to October can make the mountain road slippery; November to February is clear and cool.

Where to stay: there are guesthouses around Jingmai and Mangjing, which fill early in the tea season, and others in Huimin town.

Combining: Pu'er city, Xishuangbanna, or a return via Kunming.

Why it was inscribed

The World Heritage Committee found that it meets criteria (iii), (v) of the ten selection criteria:

(iii) a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared.

(v) an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use or sea-use representative of a culture, or of human interaction with the environment, especially when it has become vulnerable to irreversible change.

Description (UNESCO World Heritage Centre)

Located on Jingmai Mountain in southwestern China, this cultural landscape was developed over a thousand years by the Blang and Dai peoples following practices that began in the 10th century. The property is a tea production area comprised of traditional villages within old tea groves surrounded by forests and tea plantations. The traditional understorey cultivation of old tea trees is a method that responds to the specific conditions of the mountain’s ecosystem and subtropical monsoon climate, combined with a governance system maintained by the local Indigenous communities. Traditional ceremo

Nearby

Straight-line distances. Search nearby