Reported by Liu Jianping and Wu Yiming (www.xnnews.com.cn)

　　On Mar. 28th, 2012, employees in the tea plantation base in Tongcheng County are cloning Oolong tea during the spring plugging. Till now, the town has 1,000 Mus (1 Mu= 0.167 Acre) of Oolong tea, which is one of the big movements of expanding tea industry and changing development patterns in this county.

　　In Tongcheng County, tea plantations cover an area of 50,000 Mus, and the annual tea output has reached 2700 tons. In recent years, due to the single production breeds, emphasis on the brand-name and high-quality of prevernal tea and neglect of the summer and autumn tea, more than 60 percent of the summer and autumn tea production in the county are the traditional oolong tea. Their selling price is less than 0.8 yuan per Jin (1 jin = 0.5 kilo) while the market price of the processed Oolong tea reach 24 yuan per jin, with a thirtyfold increase in the value. When it comes to this, Pi Xubin, manager of the tea plantation base in Jinshan, feels distressed. Last year, a deal of eight-ton traditional oolong tea, loaded a whole truck, only sell 10,000 yuan. Therefore, without transforming the development patterns of tea industry, there will be no more room for further development.

　　In order to expand and strengthen the tea industry, and form the industrial advantages,  in 2007, the base built a production line of Oolong tea with a processing capacity of 3 tons per year. What was more, it imported tree breeds of Oolong tea from Anxi, Fujian, to establish a female-parent plantation used for cloning, transformed the tea plantation with an annual speed of 20% to reach the target of transforming 3,000 mus in 3 to 5 years.

　　For the purpose of improving the process technology of Oolong tea, the tea plantation base, which is already the provincial standardized model factory in processing tea, designated five employees to learn tea production skills in Anxi. Furthermore, this year, in order to enhance productivity, it has invested in updating the originally introduced equipment for producing Oolong tea. As a result, the annual production increased from 3 tons to 20 tons. Meanwhile, the newly-built thermostat withering plant has been proved to meet production needs, and is expected to create an annual output of 1.2 million yuan by merely producing Oolong tea.