You hear it more often these days: What farmers nowadays worry the most about is whether their children will eventually take over their family tea business. Drinking tea is easy, but actually producing it isn't. Producing tea requires attention to detail and simply a lot of hard work. In addition, the youth in China is more interested in office jobs in big cities.
However, Ms. Liu (image above) is luckily more open minded than most other farmer families: "As a mother, I just want to share my love for tea with my daughter. Of course, I hope she will one day take over our farm, but if she decides to go her own way, I would fully support her."
We aren't too worried about this trend though. As we speak to many tea families we also often hear from farmers that many of their sons and daughters eventually decide to move back home and get involved in the tea business. "My son found out that life in the city wasn't the adventure he hoped it would be. The air is polluted and people are less friendly compared to our small community. Eventually, he felt that contributing to our family business was a more meaningful." says another farmer Mr. Zhou.
This doesn't mean that it's that the city experience was a waste of time. The next generation comes back with useful skills such as marketing/branding, management and sales. These experiences gained in the city are often highly valuable to the family business.