Blang people celebrate as old tea forests in Pu'er win World Heritage Site status

The Blang people in Jingmai Mountain, Lancang Lahu Autonomous County in　southwest　China's　Yunnan Province, sang and danced to celebrate as the　Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu'er was inscribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage List on Sunday. 　

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee added the property to the list on its 45th session in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,　making it China's 57th World Heritage site.　 　

The　cultural landscape　covers nine traditional villages, three old tea plantations operated and managed by villagers for generations and three protective and partition forests. It is estimated that there are more than one million tea trees in the old tea plantations, according to a press release issued by the Aministration for the Conservation of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in Pu'er. 　

The property was jointly created by the ancestors of the Blang people who immigrated to Jingmai Mountain in the 10th century AD and discovered and domesticated wild tea trees and by the ancestors of Dai people who later came to settle there.