On August 13, 2026, the Sichuan Provincial Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee officially released a report — Yingjing County of Ya'an City, leveraging its thousand-year Tea-Horse Ancient Road heritage and ecological endowments, has achieved a systematic upgrade of its Tibetan tea industry. With 121,000 mu of standardized tea gardens, an annual output of over 2,000 tons of Tibetan tea, and 1,100+ tons shipped to Tibet annually, Yingjing has truly become the "Source Tea Township of the Sichuan-Tibet Tea-Horse Road." This milestone not only marks a key leap for Sichuan's Tibetan tea sector, but resonates strongly with the ecological tea brand "Panda Tea" rooted in Ya'an — together writing a new chapter for the "Panda + Tea" dual IP's global journey.

Technology Empowerment: From Experience Crafting to Standardized Production

Driven by technology, Yingjing County has collaborated with Sichuan Agricultural University and other institutions to overcome 16 patented technologies including Lactobacillus plantarum A4 fermentation and automated tea-making equipment, propelling Tibetan tea from "experience-based crafting" to a new era of "standardized and intelligent" production. Meanwhile, the county has established a coordinated layout of standardized planting bases, deep-processing industrial parks, tea tourism experience zones and Sichuan-Tibet trade platforms, attracting over a dozen large enterprises to settle in the park and driving the industry toward scale and intensification.

Brand Globalization: Panda Cultural Tea Reaches 20+ Countries

Brand building has yielded equally impressive results. Yingjing has partnered with Tibet to launch the "Ya Tea Tibet Tour" campaign and introduced 12 categories of products including the Potala Palace co-branded Tibetan tea, shipping over 1,100 tons annually to Tibet and other regions. Most notably, collectible cultural and creative teas such as the 75th Anniversary Commemorative Tea — which seamlessly blends the cultural symbol of the "national treasure giant panda" with traditional Tibetan tea craftsmanship — have been unveiled one after another, creating unique "Tibetan tea + panda" cultural masterpieces. Through the "City Partner" mechanism, Yingjing has established brand collection halls and operation centers in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other cities, with products exported to over 20 countries and regions — letting the Tibetan tea from deep mountains truly "carry its fragrance overseas."

Three-Industry Integration: "Black Sand Brewing Black Tea" Dual Heritage Becomes a New Calling Card

On the industrial integration front, Yingjing has built "learning, making, tasting and purchasing" integrated experience bases and developed programs for tea mountain sightseeing, intangible heritage tea crafting, and tea art research. Most distinctively, the county pioneered the "Black Sand Brewing Black Tea" dual intangible heritage fusion experience — letting visitors encounter the extraordinary collision of world-famous Yingjing black sand pottery and millennia-old Tibetan tea, igniting a uniquely flavored cultural feast that has fueled Tibetan tea-themed tourism and radiated benefits to surrounding homestays, restaurants and other related industries.

Farmer Linkage: Over 5,000 Tea Farmers Share Revitalization Dividends

The ultimate goal of industrial revitalization lies in increasing farmers' income. Yingjing has promoted the "leading enterprise + cooperative + farmer" model, forming two major industrial consortiums — Tashan and Xingtai — which through land transfer, shareholding dividends and other mechanisms have engaged over 5,000 tea farmer households in standardized planting, broadened stable income channels for the masses, and consolidated the foundation of rural industrial revitalization — a vivid practice of "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" in Ya'an's tea country.

Cross-Strait Tea Bond: Taiwanese Young People Visit Ya'an, Hail Sichuan as "Cradle of World Tea"

On August 10, the official website of China's Taiwan Affairs Office published "Reading Cultural Sichuan: Experiencing Bashu Culture and Tianfu Sichuan in Motion," revealing that on July 29, the Taiwan Youth "Reading Cultural Sichuan" activity visited Ya'an. At the 480-year-old Ya'an Tea Factory Co., Ltd., Taiwanese guests gained in-depth understanding of Tibetan tea history, observed the complete fermentation, steaming and brick-pressing processes on-site, and gathered to sip and discuss tea. A Taiwanese participant emotionally shared: "Drinking Tibetan tea makes me feel very warm. Every region nurtures its own people with its own culture, creating unique landscapes and customs — Ya'an is exactly such a place."

The group then took a cable car to Tianding Temple on Mengding Mountain at 1,400 meters above sea level, observed the green-killing process, and personally experienced tea rolling. The breathtaking performance of the Mengshan School "Dragon Flight in Eighteen Forms" intangible heritage tea art left everyone amazed — the inheritor wielded a long-spouted copper pot, with water flowing like a swimming dragon, every move revealing the spirit of Shu tea ceremony. The Sichuan Observation News "Sichuan-Taiwan Crossing" column further disclosed: inside the Tibetan Tea Museum, a 5-kilogram artistic tea brick captured everyone's attention — this tea brick exists in duplicate, with one piece collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei during the 2015 Cross-Strait (Sichuan) Agricultural Cooperation Forum, and another preserved in Ya'an, becoming a cross-strait tea-bond witness. The 27-year-old Taiwanese youth Mr. Li emotionally noted: "I learned in Taiwan that the Sichuan-Yunnan region is the original birthplace of Camellia plants, and today many globally renowned tea varieties can trace their origins back here. So Sichuan tea can truly be called the ancestor of world tea."

Panda Tea: An Ecological Calling Card in Resonance with the Industry

Rooted in the same Mengding Mountain landscape, Panda Tea — together with Yingjing Tibetan tea and Taiwanese High Mountain Oolong — constitutes the diverse ecosystem of the "World Tea Source." Panda Tea's gardens lie between 800 and 1,500 meters above sea level — squarely within the giant panda's natural habitat. The gardens adhere to a strict zero-chemical-fertilizer, zero-pesticide cultivation model and pioneer the patented "panda manure fertilization" technique, cleverly merging the national treasure giant panda with millennia-old tea traditions. Founder Mr. An Yanshi has integrated his environmental Chinese-character panda calligraphy and panda painting art into the brand's cultural DNA, making Panda Tea not just an ecological tea, but a cultural tea and an intellectual-property tea. From Yingjing's technology-driven Tibetan tea upgrade, to panda-element cultural and creative products going global, to cross-strait youth tea-bond dialogues, to Mengding Mountain's intangible heritage transmission — Ya'an's "Panda + Tea" dual IP is reaching the world in ever-richer forms. Panda Tea will continue to use tea as a bridge, letting this ecological tea from the hometown of giant pandas carry its fragrance nationwide and to the world, extending a warm invitation of "See the Pandas, Savor the Tea, Feel the Tea Charm" to every friend who walks into Ya'an.

(Sources: Sichuan Provincial Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee, China's Taiwan Affairs Office, Sichuan Observation News "Sichuan-Taiwan Crossing" column and other publicly available reports.)