In the height of summer, Ya'an's "Panda + Tea" dual cultural IP continues to gain momentum with two major events unfolding in parallel. On August 6, the official Ya'an tea-tourism bullet train — train C3354 — pulled into Ya'an Railway Station carrying 400 travelers, officially launching the "Thousand Li Rivers and Mountains, Ya'an in the Picture" summer tour program's first chartered train. Days earlier, the 2026 Cross-Strait University Students "Visit the Panda Homeland · Trace the Tea Ancestor's Roots" study tour concluded, bringing young students and faculty from both sides of the Taiwan Strait on a cultural journey across tea gardens and panda habitats.

First Tea-Tourism Train: A Cup of Mengding Ganlu, a Thousand Years of Tea Heritage

From Chengdu to Ya'an, the 1-hour-37-minute ride is a fragrant encounter spanning two millennia. Travelers headed straight to Mengding Mountain, the world's tea source. Outside the Tea Ancestor Hall, twelve thousand-year-old ginkgo trees stand in quiet witness to the cycles of spring harvest and autumn leaves. A cup of Mengding Ganlu, its leaves dancing in the water, carries the legacy of Wu Lizhen's tea trees planted two thousand years ago. As tea artists performed the intangible heritage "Eighteen Dragon Moves" with long-spout copper kettles, guests were treated to a dual feast of sight and taste — the strength of Chinese martial arts blended with the elegance of the Mengding tea ceremony. With Mengding Mountain now striving to create a national 5A scenic area, tea-tourism integration is unfolding as green mountains flashing past train windows and warm tea in travelers' cups.

Cross-Strait Study Tour: Visiting the Panda Homeland, Tracing the Tea Ancestor's Roots

From July 19 to 26, the 2026 Cross-Strait University Students study tour took place in Ya'an, organized with the support of the Ya'an Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang. Twenty-eight students and faculty from Tzu Chi University of Taiwan and Sichuan Agricultural University participated. In Mingshan District's rolling tea terraces stretching for miles, students made tea pastries together, enjoyed the "Twelve Heavenly Winds" intangible heritage tea ceremony, and experienced the full process of tea fixation and rolling with their own hands. Ascending Mengding Mountain to trace the tea ancestor's homeland, they explored the Tea History Museum's millennia-old heritage of the "world tea source." When they raised covered bowls to taste their first Mengding Ganlu, many Taiwanese students marveled that the oolong tea they had grown up with traced its roots to this very mountain. At the Bifengxia Giant Panda Base, students donned volunteer uniforms to help caretakers prepare fresh bamboo and make panda "wotou" buns. At the Longcanggou Wild Giant Panda Release Base, they trekked along ecological trails into the primeval forest. In the Yingjing black-pottery intangible heritage workshop, students from both sides shaped "giant panda culture" themed clay pieces at the same table — fingertips touching, connecting cultural genes with roots a thousand years deep.

Panda Tea: An Ecological Tea Rooted in the Land of Dual Origins

As an ecological tea brand rooted in the core production area of Mengding Mountain, Panda Tea's tea gardens sit within the natural habitat of giant pandas. The brand adheres to zero-chemical-fertilizer, zero-pesticide ecological cultivation and pioneered the patented "panda manure organic fertilization" technology, ingeniously combining the national treasure giant panda with millennia-old tea culture. Founder Mr. An Yanshi infuses the brand with a unique cultural DNA through his environmental panda calligraphy and paintings, making Panda Tea an ecological tea, a cultural tea, and an intellectual-property tea. From the first tea-tourism train's fragrant rendezvous to the cross-strait students' root-seeking journey, the value of Ya'an's "Panda Homeland, World Tea Source" dual IP is being seen by ever more people. Panda Tea will continue to use tea as a bridge, letting this ecological tea from the panda's hometown carry its fragrance across the strait and around the world.

(Sources: Sichuan News Network, Sichuan Agricultural University News, Sichuan Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, Toutiao; cover image generated by AI.)