Phu Luong’s positive preparation for Tea Festival

 About the total area of tea, Phu Luong is the 2^nd district in Thai Nguyen province with nearly 4,500 hectares, concentrating mainly in communes: Tuc Tranh, Vo Tranh, Son Cam, Phu Do, etc. In which, the area of tea for business is 4,300 hectares. The local people in Phu Luong district produce more than 30 thousand tons of buds’ tea to supply the market in the whole country every year.

 Tea has been grown in Phu Luong for a long time, but only from 1990, the local people attached special importance to development and growing of tea and until 2000, when Phu Luong district made a project “Enhancing production, processing, consumption of tea”, tea plant gradually developed strongly and became the key plant in Phu Luong. From 2000 to 2005, there were 700 hectares of tea growing, concurrently, 1,300 hectares of old tea plant improved. This was the area that the tea producer have not taken care the caring method really before and that made the tea quality reduced seriously, the productivity was only about 30 quintals per hectare. However, after being trained and applying the improvement methods, this area was restored quickly and the productivity of this area was more than 50 quintals per hectare.

 Continuing to implement the Project in the next stage, from 2006 to 2010, there were 200 hectares of tea grown newly and 200 hectares improved, these things increased the total area of tea of Phu Luong to nearly 450 hectares. Especially, in this stage, in company with continuous intensive farming of midland tea area, the district paid attention to check, arrange and develop the producing area of high-class tea step by step in communes: Vo Tranh, Tuc Tranh, Phu Do, Yen Lac with the high-quality tea varieties such as: Kim Thuyen, Thuy Ngoc, O Long Thanh Tam, Keo Am Tich, PT95. To other communes, people embedded positively the new varieties of branch tea such as: LFP1, LDP2, TRI777, Phuc Van Tien, Bat Tien, etc. in production. As a result, the productivity and quality of tea in Phu Luong district were increased significantly. At present, the average productivity of Phu Luong achieves 86 quintals per hectare.

 As for being one of the most priority land of tea so that Phu Luong is chosen not only to be a tourist spot for visitors but also to be prepared with local products which will be displayed in the Tea Festival held in the end of this year. Obviously, this is a good chance for Phu Luong to advertise its image and trademark as well as its local products, especially the local tea products. Hence, the district has been launching many activities to prepare for the Festival. One of the prominent activities they are doing currently is that the district is focusing on upgrading and repairing 2 lines: one is the Giang Tien- Phu Do – Nui Phan line and the other is the Tuc Tranh – Yen Lac – Yen Do line with its total length equals to 40 km and its total investment capital is more than 20 trillion dong. These 2 lines belong to local tea area, crossing many tea villages of the district such as Yen Thuy, Phu Nam, Khe Coc, Goc Gao… As planned, both of the lines will be completed in the late September to welcome the Festival.

Besides, the district in coordination with Department of Industry and Trade jointly held a trade festival, which consists of 15 workshops to display strength products of the districts such as Porcupines, snakes, mushrooms, rice…and especially there are approximately 10 display workshops for tea products. Purpose of organizing this festival is to take a trial festival for display and train useful skills, culture, communication skills for people who are in charge of displaying products and making introductions at the festival. Simultaneously, it aims to select good workshops which brings typical values of the area to display at the festival.

 In addition, due to the importance of this Tea Festival, local farmers are well preparing for their tea land to have good view in hope to attract tourists to visit. Under the golden sun of the last summer days, tea fields which belong to Bai Bang village, Tuc Tranh commune still be sunk in fresh green color with tea buds shooting out and the leaves are stirring gently through the wind. The pervasive aroma of tea in the wind made us feel comfortable and release all of our stress. Nguyen Van Kieu, a leader of Bai Bang village introduce: Bai Bang is one of the 5 tea villages in Khe Coc area including Bai Bang, Tan Thai, Ke Coc, Dap Tran, Minh Hop. This is one of the places where tea products are ranked as the best products in the area because land and water source here are best for tea plants. Khe Coc group covers more than 242 ha of tea plants with more than 150 producing tea families. However, due to unfamiliar tea trademark so local tea products couldn’t be sold with high price, it’s about 60.000 vnd for each kilo of fried tea buds; therefore, lives of tea planting farmers are still poor. In 2010, total revenues of the group from selling tea is of 5,5 trillion dong, average income of each farmer is about 18 million dong per year. The local people took care of tea terraced-fields carefully, earthed up and turned up tea beds, made plots, tea fields, concurrently, enhanced tendance in order to make tea plant bear buds regularly.

Expectation of farmers in Khe Coc group is also hope of farmers in the whole district, so farmers in all tea planting areas especially tea old villages are in good consciousness to prepare for the festival, and to make quality tea products for visitors with the hope that festival’s activities and tea products will make impression at the festival and create a new position in visitors’ hearts.

These are activities belonging activities of culture, tourist to respond the Festival. Through countryside’s market, the aim is to introduce and honor the cultural value of Vietnamese people which was filtered and converged from the long-standing tradition of countryside’s markets on Vietnam, contribute to preserve the traditional  culture features of Vietnamese…