A Preliminary Study On Management And Application Of Tea In De'ang Ethnic Group

China is the original place of tea and the earliest country to drink tea. There is a long history of tea culture. Many ethnic groups in China still maintain their traditional custom of drinking tea. It will, therefore, be very important to study ethnic tea culture for both traditional culture conservation and modern multi-cultural development.There is a close relationship between the ecological environment and natural resources, and the inherent traditional culture among local ethnic groups. This paper mainly focuses on the De'ang ethnic group who was called "old tea-grower" as the target group, aiming at studying their management and application of tea as well as their traditional tea culture. Although De'ang ethnic group still use their native language and their ethnic traditional culture has been reserved as a whole, their culture preserves rather scattered and has a characteristic of concentration in spots but scattering on a larger area. Due to the factors influenced by history, society and natural conditions, the degree of social development of De'ang ethnic group is low and relatively undeveloped, comparing with other local ethnic groups. During our investigation, we found that the De'ang ethnic group lost a lot of unique traditional tea culture. If they still follow the current management methods of tea trees and the attitude to ancient tea trees, it will cause negatives to the development of economy, society and culture.The history, culture and hoary tea culture of the De'ang ethnic group was described in the thesis. Then the reason why the traditional tea arts disappeared and the tea-leaves production decreased had been analyzed. The development of tea industry between De'ang and Bu'lang groups was compared. Finally, it summarized how De'ang should protect and transmit its own ethnic culture especially the tea culture down to the next generations.The quality of De'ang tea products has been improved and the reputation of its tea culture has been promoted, through public evaluation methods and ideas'feedback mechanism. Lastly, the constructive suggestions of developing the De'ang tea enterprises had been proposed. The importance to extend the De'ang unique tea culture to the world has been emphasized, too.