Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest

UNESCO Cultural Landscape in Yunnan's Pu'er region — ancient cultivated tea forests maintained by Blang and Dai ethnic communities for over 1,000 years, representing a living tradition of forest tea cultivation.

The Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu'er was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023, the first tea cultural landscape in the world to receive this designation. The property covers approximately 19,100 hectares in the Lancang Lahu Autonomous County of Pu'er Prefecture, Yunnan, and is centred on five clusters of ancient cultivated tea forest located within montane tropical rainforest at altitudes between 1,100 and 1,900 m.

The Blang and Dai communities of Jingmai Mountain have cultivated tea trees beneath the forest canopy for an estimated 1,300 years, using an agroforestry system that maintains the genetic diversity and ecological services of the surrounding forest whilst producing tea with distinctive flavour characteristics. The oldest trees are estimated at several hundred years of age; some sections contain trees over 1,000 years old. Unlike modern plantation tea — grown in monoculture rows with chemical inputs — the Jingmai forest tea grows in polyculture shade conditions that support biodiversity and require no chemical fertilisers.

Nine traditional villages with well-preserved Blang and Dai timber architecture sit within the forest landscape, including Wengji and Nannuo villages. The villages' houses, community halls and ritual spaces reflect the close integration of human settlement with forest and tea cultivation. Tea picking, processing and ritual ceremonies connected to the annual harvest remain living practices maintained by the communities.

Visitors can walk forest tea garden trails with local guides, visit tea processing workshops and purchase authentic old-tree pu-erh tea directly from growers. Accommodation in village guesthouses is available.