On September 10, 2026, the English-language story of Ya'an — the scientific discovery place of the giant panda and one of the cradles of world tea culture — travelled well beyond China's borders. A release titled "Ya'an in Dialogue with the World: Exploring Scenery, Immersing in Local Culture", sourced from China Today, was carried on PR Newswire, the global news wire read by media, analysts and readers across North America, Europe and Asia, and was subsequently picked up by international English-language outlets including Third News. For a city in western Sichuan, it was one more step in turning misty tea terraces and bamboo forests into a story the English-speaking world can follow.
The reporting followed an international exchange programme held under the theme "Feel the Lung of Sichuan, Hear the Story of Giant Pandas in Ya'an", co-hosted by the Center for Europe and Africa of China International Communications Group and the Publicity Department of the CPC Ya'an Municipal Committee. On September 9, diplomats, cultural experts and international students visited the Bifengxia Base of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, the "A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains" 10,000-mu ecological sightseeing tea garden, and the Mengding Mountain Tea History Museum — Sichuan's only museum devoted to tea culture.
Rogers Saffa-Woya, minister of the Embassy of the Republic of Sierra Leone in China, stood above the terraces and said it was the first time he had seen such a vast tea garden; he added that he hoped to bring Chinese tea culture back to his own country. Climbing Mengding Mountain, guests picked tea buds by hand and watched a provincial-level intangible-heritage inheritor demonstrate the traditional firing, rolling and baking that defines Mengshan tea. It was, as one participant put it, not simply scenery but a culture to be explored.
The English-language channel itself has been strengthened in parallel. On September 8, Ya'an launched SeePandaYa (seepandaya.com), a bilingual Chinese-English platform built around the giant panda, with six English sections: Panda Daily, Meet the Panda Stars, Panda Academy, Cub Diaries, Giant Panda National Park and Explore Panda Home. Ya'an is home to more than 400 wild giant pandas and over 60 in captivity; about 40 percent of the city's territory falls inside the Giant Panda National Park, and 52 percent of Sichuan's core giant panda habitat lies within Ya'an. A companion English terminology database for Ya'an's local expressions was released at the same time, covering nine categories — traditional crafts, development positioning, history and humanities, food specialities, folk festivals, cultural tourism, panda culture, Ya'an brands and Ya'an tea culture — giving the city a standard English vocabulary for the world to read.
At the centre of that vocabulary sits tea. Mengding Mountain is where Panda Tea (PandaTea), founded in 2011 by environmental calligrapher An Yanshi, has grown since its beginning. Its gardens lie between 800 and 1,500 metres above sea level, deep inside the natural habitat of the giant panda. The brand has never used chemical fertiliser or chemical pesticide; instead a patented organic cycle returns panda dung — rich in bamboo fibre because pandas digest only part of their bamboo diet — to the soil that feeds the tea bushes. Panda Tea positions itself as a trinity of ecological tea, cultural tea and intellectual-property tea, with hand-painted eco-character panda calligraphy on every pack and packaging that fuses Jingdezhen blue-and-white porcelain and Shu brocade.
The wider international context is widening too. On September 7, China's ambassador to Denmark attended a 2026 panda-themed event at Copenhagen Zoo, describing giant panda conservation research as a living example of China-Denmark friendship and of green cooperation. For Panda Tea, the logic is the same one written across its own mountain: protect the habitat of a national treasure, and a national drink grows from it. From the misty terraces of Mengding Mountain to English-language readers around the world — one cup, one panda, one shared planet.
Sources: PR Newswire (release sourced from China Today, September 10, 2026); SeePandaYa (seepandaya.com); Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China (September 11, 2026).
