Tea Enriches Mountain Village, Dividends Bring Joy to Residents

In Yaduo Village, Shiyueliang Township, Fugong County, villagers are busy harvesting tea leaves. On February 10th, the village committee square was filled with vibrant banners fluttering in the wind and the unmistakable joy on the faces of 392 Lisu ethnic households. The occasion was Yaduo Village's first collective economic dividend distribution ceremony, bringing immense happiness to the mountain community.

Staff meticulously verified household information and counted cash, while villagers lined up to sign and receive their share, with laughter and cheer spreading throughout the settlement. The total distributed dividend of 1 million yuan entirely originated from the "Yaduo Village Tea" industry project, supported by Shanghai-based Atour Lifestyle Holdings Limited. The allocation was precise and comprehensive: 858,300 yuan was distributed universally among the 392 households; 21,700 yuan was allocated to a special care and incentive fund to support families in difficulty and reward students with excellent academic and moral character; 100,000 yuan was reserved as reinvestment capital for the village collective economy, specifically for improving tea cultivation quality and upgrading equipment; and 20,000 yuan was directed into the village public welfare fund to enhance infrastructure and public services.

For elderly individuals with limited mobility, people with disabilities, and other special groups, village cadres conducted door-to-door visits to deliver cash or deposit slips personally, ensuring every resident could tangibly benefit from the industry's development.

The rise of Yaduo Village's tea industry began with a connection spanning mountains and seas. In 2012, Ye Lvyin, founder of Atour Lifestyle Holdings Limited, visited the Nujiang Grand Canyon and encountered this Lisu village, whose name means "where the moon rises." The pristine ecology, simple folkways, and high-quality mountain tea left a deep impression on him, leading to the company being named "Atour" and planting the seed for shared prosperity between the enterprise and the locality.

In 2017, Atour Lifestyle Holdings Limited formally partnered with Yaduo Village, and the "Yaduo Village Tea" project took root. Over the past nine years, the group has focused on the high-mountain tea industry as a core driver, empowering the village's industrial transformation comprehensively. Efforts ranged from organizing standardized planting training to shift cultivation from scattered plots to规模化,规范化 practices, to funding the construction of a modern tea factory, advancing production from traditional methods to standardized processing. Each step has been solid and impactful.

Fugong County has now established four standardized tea production bases. "Yaduo Village Tea" has successfully been integrated into the sales network of 2,000 Atour hotels nationwide, creating a closed-loop industrial chain covering planting, processing, and sales, thus solving the historical challenge of easy cultivation but difficult sales for villagers. By the end of December 2025, Atour Lifestyle Holdings Limited's procurement value of finished tea in Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture had exceeded 76 million yuan.

The thriving tea industry has enabled villagers who previously sought work away from home to realize the dream of finding employment locally while caring for their families. San Lipu, a former migrant worker who rarely returned home, was constantly concerned about his elderly parents and children. After the tea factory was built, he returned to work there, learning techniques for tea picking, processing, and tasting, eventually becoming a technical backbone. He now serves as a rotating factory manager at Lajiamudi Tea Factory, with an annual income exceeding 100,000 yuan. "Now, fellow villagers have income from growing tea and also receive dividends. The good life we want is right here at our doorstep," San Lipu said with a smile.

Today, Yaduo Village is brimming with the aroma of tea and vitality. Tea planting covers 3,875 mu, and the industry has radiated to over ten surrounding villages, becoming Fugong County's second-largest characteristic pillar industry after tsao-ko. "This dividend distribution marks a阶段性 achievement in Yaduo Village's tea industry development and is a vivid example of Shanghai-Yunnan cooperation and enterprise-local collaboration driving rural revitalization," said Zhen Xinchen, Secretary of the Yaduo Village Party Branch. He stated that the village would use this dividend as a new starting point to continue deepening the tea industry and explore integrated development paths combining tea, tourism, and culture, allowing the high-mountain tea's fragrance to spread farther and enabling more Lisu people to reap stable happiness through characteristic industry development.