第一比分网

Vast seas of tea plantations stretch endlessly, vibrant with greenery. With the autumn tea harvest now in full swing, farmers in Datian Village, Suichang County, arrive early at the plantations, skillfully plucking the fresh, tender tea leaves.

“I can pick thirty to forty jin of tea leaves in the morning, earning over 200 yuan,” explained tea farmer Wang Lishu. Suichang tea yields three harvests per year, with spring tea being the primary income source—the finest Longjing tea leaves can fetch over 130 yuan per jin. “The mountains, fields, forests, water, and even the air in our village have a price tag. Our pristine ecology is certified, allowing our tea to command better prices.”

How can lucid waters and lush mountains have a “price tag”?

In May 2019, Datian Village, as the nation’s first village-level GEP (Gross Ecosystem Product) accounting pilot, completed its 2018 GEP assessment, valuing its ecosystem services at 160 million yuan. According to the Lishui Municipal Bureau of Statistics’ “Industry Classification Catalog for Ecological Products and Related Industries”, the value-added of ecological products and related industries in Datian Village reached 64.79 million yuan in 2018, accounting for 73.1% of the village’s GDP.

A GEP report serves as an “ecological ledger”. “The report not only clarifies the value of Datian’s ecological resources but also details the strengths and weaknesses in local resource development, charting a clear direction for village growth,” said Xiang Ping, Secretary of the Datian Village Party General Branch.

In recent years, building on its ecological advantages, Datian has deeply cultivated its tea industry, transforming plantations into a “green bank” and tangibly boosting villagers’ incomes. Last year, the village’s tea planting area reached 3,200 mu, producing 600 tons of dried tea with an output value of 27 million yuan. The per capita disposable income of villagers exceeded 38,000 yuan.

The abundant high-mountain tea resources in and around Datian have spurred the creation of the largest digital tea entrepreneurship park in southwestern Zhejiang. Hosting 21 tea enterprises, the park processed over 1,400 tons of tea in 2024, with an output value exceeding 150 million yuan. This cluster of businesses is continuously extending the local tea industry chain, gradually opening doors to the new tea beverage market.

Recently, the production facility of Zhejiang Guimingyuan Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. has been filled with the aroma of tea. Through a series of steps—fixation, rolling, drying, blending, scenting, and homogenizing—thousands of jin of fresh leaves are transformed into raw materials for new-style tea beverages. After packaging, they are shipped to destinations like Guangzhou and Hangzhou.

“We annually purchase one to two million jin of tea leaves from surrounding areas to produce ingredients for milk tea,” shared Zhu Mingxia, the company's responsible person. Suppliers for new tea beverages buy both spring tea and summer-autumn tea, significantly enhancing the utilization and added value of Suichang's local summer-autumn harvest. The company has also established stable partnerships with well-known milk tea brands like Guming. As of June this year, product sales had reached 12 million yuan.

Bolstered by a solid tea industry foundation, the ecological value of lucid waters and lush mountains continues to be unlocked. Leveraging the opportunity presented by dual GDP and GEP accounting, Datian was listed among Suichang’s first batch of future village pilot projects. It has successively developed projects such as the vast tea plantation greenway, Fuyun Post Station, and Tea Aroma Block, attracting social investments like boutique homestays and branded cafes. This year, Datian was designated a 2025 first-batch provincial key village (for mountainous and island counties), forming the “Fragrant Tea Datian” cluster development zone with seven neighboring villages to explore a common prosperity path tailored to local conditions.

“The cluster villages have established a ‘group deliberation system’, focusing on upgrading the tea industry and integrating tea culture with tourism. Projects like the tea comprehensive trading market upgrade and the Zhexi Tea Experience are underway,” Xiang Ping explained. Once completed, these projects are expected to increase the collective annual income of surrounding villages by 800,000 yuan, create over 300 new jobs, and raise the per capita income of more than 1,000 residents by over 10,000 yuan.

To further enhance the marketization of local ecological products and services, last year, 12 administrative villages, including Datian, integrated resources like the vast tea plantations to launch a “Future Village” investment promotion project. They introduced a “rural operation partner”—Shenzhen Leling Group—which tailors differentiated operational strategies based on each village's unique resource characteristics and cultural fabric.

“Visitor flow is key to activating rural development. Through curated programs integrating art elements like exhibitions, music, and photography, we aim to attract people and consumption potential to the countryside,” explained Lan Jiali, Deputy General Manager of Suichang Leling Investment Management Co., Ltd. “Simultaneously, we deeply collaborate with local tea enterprises to enhance Suichang tea’s regional brand awareness, boost local agricultural sales, and build a closed-loop rural operation model where ‘scenery attracts visitors, and products generate income’.”

In March of this year, the Tea Mountain Cloud Sea Café and the Leling · Vast Sea of Clouds Homestay, nestled within over 13,000 mu of tea plantations, opened for business. They quickly became a famous social media hotspot, attracting tourists from Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, and other cities who made special trips to experience the tea garden scenery. During holidays, all 14 rooms in the homestay are fully booked, with guests needing to reserve rooms half a month in advance during peak seasons. The café became profitable from its first day, selling 20 to 50 cups of coffee on weekdays, over 100 cups on weekends, and averaging 200 cups per day during this year's May Day holiday period.

【Extended Reading】

Datian Village is the nation's first village to conduct both GDP and GEP accounting. On May 30, 2019, the country’s first village-level GEP report was released in Suichang County. The report showed that Datian Village's 2018 GEP was 160 million yuan, comprising water conservation (51.5219 million yuan), climate regulation (54.4946 million yuan), and negative oxygen ions (84,400 yuan). In January 2020, Datian’s 2018 GDP accounting report was published. The village’s GDP reached 88.58 million yuan, with the primary industry accounting for 22.10 million yuan, the secondary industry 39.73 million yuan, and the tertiary industry 26.75 million yuan. The industrial structure ratio was 25.0:44.8:30.2.

【Expert Commentary】

Chen Jingdong, Professor of the “Lucid Waters and Lush Mountains” Teaching and Research Section at the Lishui Municipal Party Committee School of the CPC:

Lucid waters contain gold, and lush mountains have value. To efficiently transform “lucid waters and lush mountains” into tangible assets, “accounting and evaluation” form the essential foundation and prerequisite for realizing the value of ecological products. Datian Village, as the nation’s first to complete GEP accounting, used this assessment to understand its ecological assets thoroughly. Building on this, it focused on new pathways like high-mountain ecological tea and integrating culture, agriculture, and tourism. By innovating “green-wealth co-prosperity” operational mechanisms and simultaneously pursuing “green transformation” and harnessing “ecological flow”, Datian strives to ensure its “lucid waters and lush mountains” deliver tangible “prosperity effects” for its people.