Quake's impact spills over into tea production

Saturday's earthquake and subsequent aftershocks in Sichuan province have paralyzed tea production on a mountain famous for supplying China's imperial families for more than 1,000 years.

Because of its proximity to Lushan county, the epicenter of the magnitude-7 quake, Mengding Mountain has seen a lot of damage to many of its centuries-old buildings, which survived a magnitude-8 earthquake in the same province five years ago.

"Many houses built with wood in the mountain have collapsed. Now and then, debris still falls down," said Jian Shuquan, deputy director of the Center for the Study of International Tea Culture in Mengding Mountain, who surveyed the mountain on Sunday.

"I saw a boulder, probably 3 meters in diameter, crashing through the wall of a house, and leaving a large dent in the ground," he said.

Jian said that as aftershocks continued, tea farmers and villagers had set up tents outside their houses. "Nobody dares to enter the tea factory. About 2,000 kg of freshly picked tea leaves were left unattended and were spoiled."

But the tea fields were unscathed by the quake. There were no landslides, and all the tea trees are safe, Jian said.

For many tea makers on the 1,456-meter-high mountain, April is the best time to make their high-quality teas, which were favored by members of the royal families from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) until 1911, when the last Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) emperor was toppled.