With the aroma of tea lingering in the air, hundreds of thousands of tea lovers, experts and tea producers will gather today for the 2004 Shanghai International Tea Culture Festival, which has become an annual event since its launch 10 years ago.

The history of the tea culture festival goes back to July 1991, when the Revolutionary History Exhibition Hall in Zhabei District opened the Songyuan Teahouse, a small yet culturally rich place that attracted large groups of tea lovers and media attention.

Making good use of the historical documents of Wu Juenong (1897-1989), China's modern tea master who lived in the district for seven years, the teahouse became an advocate of this traditional beverage, making a great contribution to the promotion of tea culture, a brilliant Chinese legacy. The get-togethers and seminars held at the Songyuan Teahouse became the inspiration for the tea culture festival.

Believing that a district without its own cultural brand is like a person without a soul, the district government determined to build a "soul" for the district. Thanks to its long history, tea culture became the obvious choice. Although the history of tea is almost as long as that of farming and medicine, it remains a contemporary favorite, appealing to both refined and popular tastes, the old and the young.

With the assistance of Songyuan Teahouse, a brand which has already gained solid ground in Zhabei, and based on the existing biannual culture festival, the idea of a yearly event featuring tea culture was formed. It was thus that the first Shanghai International Tea Culture Festival raised its curtains in 1994.

Ever since the beginning, the Zhabei District Government has spared no effort in trying to present a large-scale, top-notch cultural pageant. In 1995, the selection of Shanghai's top 10 tea culture events was held, which highlighted the whole festival and became part of Shanghai's modern tea culture history. In 1996, a series of tea culture contests was broadcast not only in Shanghai, but also in neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces through Shanghai's Oriental Television. The contests helped popularize the knowledge of tea culture, and were well received.

Four years later, 116 tea-culture-related performance groups from 106 middle and primary schools all over the country took part in the Children's Tea Ceremony Invitational Competition in Shanghai. The first of its kind nationwide, the contest paved the way for Zhabei's tea culture festival to be a national event.

In 2002, an event, entitled "Renowned Tea," not only further improved the status of the festival, but also helped greatly boost the tea economy. Events and contests like this have successfully made the tea culture festival a well-known cultural brand in Shanghai and China.

For nearly 100 years, Shanghai has remained the biggest distribution center and market for tea in China. As a result, teahouse culture, tea parties and gatherings and many other tea-related cultural phenomena are active in Shanghai. In view of this particular advantage, to make the tea culture festival a platform for tea producers all over the country has always been the major goal for Zhabei government.

Over the past decade, the tea culture festival has brought to Shanghai a good number of tea-set brands as well as tea brands such as "Sheng" (saint) green tea from Tibet, "Ye Shan" (wild mountain) tea from Chizhou and "Huang Ya" (yellow sprout) tea from Huoshan, both in Anhui Province, as well as "Lu Jian" (green sword) tea from Zhuji, "Long Jing" (dragon well) tea from Xinchang, "Long Ding" (dragon top) tea from Kaihua and "Zi Sun" (purple bamboo shoot) tea from Huzhou, all in Zhejiang Province, among others.

Through 10 years of continuous effort, the tea culture festival is now self-supporting. Aside from the startup funding for the first three years, which were subsidized by the district government, the festival has succeeded in financing itself. The 2 million yuan (US$240,000) needed for each festival is raised by different means that includes sponsorship, advertisements, event nomination, souvenir sales, trade fairs, among others. In 2002, for example, the festival won two title sponsorships for the opening ceremony and a tea ceremony performance, supervised the manufacture of a tea product, recommended eight brands and got 12 sponsorships and more than 60 congratulators which had them company names listed on the posters, products and advertisements. The government didn't spend a penny, but instead earned almost 1 million yuan.

The financial success, along with its cultural influence, helps to ensure a bright future for the Shanghai International Tea Culture Festival which is now an indispensable part of tea lovers' life and of cultural life in Shanghai.

(eastday.com April 12, 2004)