Photo of a traditional ethnic-minority village in the Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest. (People's Daily Online/Hu Zuhui)

The World Heritage application for the cultural landscape of the Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest officially got underway in June 2010. After more than a decade of efforts, it has entered a critical stage with relevant preparations at a final stage and with an aim to moving everything forward in an orderly fashion.

The Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Forest occupies an area of 28,000 mu, having a tea picking area of 12,000 mu and has a history of 1,828 years. It is currently the world's best preserved, oldest ancient tea forest, offering up the most prototypical tea forest landscape, while providing significant cultural meaning and demonstrating a harmonious relationship between humankind and the land.

It has great value for scientific research, landscaping, cultural and production applications, having become recognized as a “Miracle of Tea Culture in Human History” and the “World’s Museum for Tea Culture History and Nature".

For thousands of years, many generations among the ethnic groups residing on Jingmai Mountain have lived alongside tea plants. People live right in the middle of the tea forests, and every family has its own tea plants and cultivates their own tea, presenting a beautiful picture of respect for nature and harmony between nature and humans.