Tan Cuong Tea Hills

About ten kilometers west of the center of Thái Nguyên city, the streets give way to a very different landscape. Low round hills, shaped like upturned bowls, are covered in green from foot to crown by neat rows of tea. There are no sharp peaks and no sheer cliffs. There are only the soft curves of the hills and a green that never breaks. This is the Tân Cương tea region.

The calm countryside carries two important titles. In 2006, the Intellectual Property Office issued a certificate of geographical indication named "Tân Cương," for Tân Cương Thái Nguyên tea. The indication covers three communes, with a total area of 4861.8 hectares. Two of them are Phúc Xuân and Phúc Trìu. The third is Tân Cương itself. This means the name Tân Cương on a box of tea is not just any name. It is a name whose origin is protected by law.

The second title means even more. On February 14, 2023, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism issued Decision 240. It declared "the knowledge of growing and processing Tân Cương tea, Thái Nguyên" a national intangible cultural heritage. What was honored is not the tea plant, and not the tea as a product, but the knowledge behind it. It is how the people of Tân Cương grow tea, tend it, pick it, roast it in the pan, let it rest, dry it and keep its aroma. This heritage has passed down through many generations, and the state has now formally recognized it.

The story of this trade begins in the early 20th century. The Thái Nguyên Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism records the man who started it. He was called Đội Năm, and his real name was Vũ Văn Hiệt. Around 1920 to 1922, he brought a variety of tea from Phú Thọ to plant in this area. From one man and one patch of land, the trade spread and shaped the Tân Cương brand over more than a century.

What makes Tân Cương tea special is not only the skill of the people who make it, but also the land. The same department describes the area as a semi-mountainous zone southwest of the city, with low hills. It lies near Núi Cốc Lake and Tam Đảo National Park. Earth, water and climate together give the tea a flavor that cannot be reproduced anywhere else.

In 2022, the provincial government of Thái Nguyên recognized the Tân Cương tea region as a community tourism site. Each year, hundreds of thousands of visitors from Vietnam and abroad come to see it, to learn the history of the trade, to try the steps from planting to processing, and to drink tea.

What draws them is not only the scenery. Many households and cooperatives in the region welcome guests to try the work firsthand. Visitors climb up to the tea fields to pick young buds one by one. They sit beside a cast-iron pan and watch a tea maker roast the leaves by hand over a wood fire. Then they pour a cup of tea just made, still fresh with the smell of smoke. This is the real thing, not a performance.

A cup of Tân Cương tea is green and fragrant, with a deep flavor that is not astringent. It is the result of a chain of knowledge that the people of Tân Cương have kept and handed down for more than a hundred years. Drinking it, a person touches a part of a heritage that cannot be seen but is very real.