Discovery of a Wild, Million-Year-Old Ancient Tea Garden on a Mountaintop in Lai Chau

It is astonishing that the old-growth forests of Lai Chau are home to a forest of ancient tea trees that may well be the rarest, most unique and largest in the world.

In the first days of the year, when the Northwest was dry and warm, we set off in search of a giant garden of ancient tea trees, perhaps the largest in Vietnam and never before known, on a very high mountain range in Lai Chau.

Nearly 10 years ago, the online newspaper VTC News published a rather fascinating discovery: a garden of ancient tea trees, with giant thousand-year-old tea trees, at an altitude of 2,500m, just below the summit of Fansipan, in the Hoang Lien Son range.

“Forest man” Tran Ngoc Lam, while going into the forest to gather medicinal herbs around 2000, stumbled upon this tea garden by chance when he saw tea flowers that had fallen on the ground.

These tea trees are all as large as ancient forest trees, with leaves growing high up, blending into the drifting mist and moss, so unless you have a keen eye, you would never notice them. They are usually only discovered when the tea flowers, a very distinctive bloom, fall to the ground.

Mr. Tran Ngoc Lam had lived in China for many years and knew that the Chinese greatly treasure thousand-year-old ancient tea trees growing wild in the forest, so he kept it a secret and told no one.

He once guided a Japanese visitor climbing Fansipan into this tea forest. When the Japanese visitor saw the ancient tea trees, so large it took a person's full embrace to circle them and a thousand years old, he knelt down and wept with happiness. He gave up climbing to the summit of Fansipan and instead pitched a tent beneath the tea trees, brewing tea to drink every day and enjoying a heavenly life for a whole week.

Source: baotainguyenmoitruong.vn

Date: 02/03/2018