Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er

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Preserving Ancient Practices in the Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er

The Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023, offers a unique insight into the rich cultural heritage and sustainable practices of the Blang and Dai peoples of southwestern China. This cultural landscape, situated on the Jingmai Mountain, has been developed over a millennium, with its origins dating back to the 10th century.

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UNESCO Description of the World Heritage Site

Located on Jingmai Mountain in southwestern China, this cultural landscape was developed over a thousand years by the Blang and Dai peoples following practices that began in the 10th century. The property is a tea production area comprised of traditional villages within old tea groves surrounded by forests and tea plantations. The traditional understorey cultivation of old tea trees is a method that responds to the specific conditions of the mountain’s ecosystem and subtropical monsoon climate, combined with a governance system maintained by the local Indigenous communities. Traditional ceremonies and festivities relate to the Tea Ancestor belief that spirits live in the tea plantations and in the local fauna and flora, a belief that is at the core of this cultural tradition.

UNESCO Justification of the World Heritage Site

Criterion (iii): The Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er represents an exceptional testimony of the understorey tea cultivation traditions that enabled the development of a complementary spatial distribution of different land uses providing ecosystems and microclimates that support both the cultivation of old tea forests and the well-being of communities residing in this organically evolved cultural landscape. Blang and Dai peoples sustained these traditions for over thousand years by following a tripartite social governance system of tribe-government-religion that, based on the Tea Ancestor belief, has protected the natural resources and preserved the old tea forests. Traditional practices follow careful considerations of the mountain climate, topographic features, and local flora and fauna, demonstrating important local and traditional knowledge that safeguards cultural and biological diversity.

Criterion (v): The Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er is an outstanding example of a sustainable land-use system based on a combination of horizontal and vertical land-use patterns. This land-use system permits the complementary use of natural resources in the mountainous environment of Jingmai Mountain and represents an exceptional example of a human interaction by Blang and Dai peoples with a challenging environment that is vulnerable to negative impacts of modernisation, urban development, and climate change. The location and layout of the traditional villages and the style of residential buildings represent the cultures and traditional knowledge of Blang and Dai peoples.

Encyclopedia Record: Pu'er City

Pu'er is a prefecture-level city in southern Yunnan Province, China. Pu'er City governs 9 counties, 1 district, 103 townships (towns), and a total population of 2.65 million. The urban administrative center of Pu'er is Simao District, which is also the former name of the prefecture-level city itself. A major downturn in the price of tea in 2007 caused severe economic distress in the area. Tea prices have since recovered, and Pu'er tea, a type of dark tea, still contributes much to the income of the area.

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