Tea brews a way out of poverty for Yunnan farmers

The company then invested in an organic tea plantation that covers an area of over 7,000 mu (466.7 hectares) in Bulangshan town of Menghai county, in Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture.

The town is a major tea production zone in Yunnan.

Zhang Hongfei from North Star was the first to arrive on the scene in 2007.

"It was barren mountains all over, and the weeds had grown to a height of a grown man," the 41-year-old from Yunnan's Dali Bai autonomous prefecture says.

He led a team of five to the town's Banzhang village, where locals were mostly struggling to make ends meet.

"They relied on making coarse tea from old tea trees and growing rice," Zhang says.

There were no place for Zhang's team to stay, and no water and road connections.

Everything had to be built from scratch.