Ancient wisdom of the tea tree forest

In the Jingmai Mountain area in Pu'er, Yunnan Province, villages lie amid forests of tea trees. Most of the houses are wooden and stand on stilts. The family lives on the upper floor, and their livestock on the lower. The roof is used for drying tea.

There is no order to a village's layout. The houses are scattered, following the terrain. In a sign of humans coexisting with nature, no mountainsides have been cleared or forests destroyed to make way for them.

Even in the face of extreme weather caused by climate change, people here continue to use their traditional construction techniques. By sourcing wood and other materials locally, they are keeping their carbon emissions to a minimum. Environmental protection is coordinated under a "forest-tea forest-village" model that underpins sustainable development.

Here, forests sustain the tea, tea sustains livelihoods, and humans and nature are nourished by the same pure mountain air.