Tea of Rui-Feng has won the special award of Alishan high camellia competition again this year! We feel great honors that villages here have received several awards in recent years. Heard from the older generation, we know that here is originally stretches of forests here. Everyone here lives a self-sufficient life through planting rice, green vegetables, bamboo shoot, and China fir. And the tea-planted was very scarce to be seen in the past. Only some families will transplant “son’s tea” around their neighborhood. This home-made “son’s tea” is simply supported for daily living needs. At that time, people’s economic condition was very harsh, and everybody’s life was in poverty. Unexpectedly, after decades, the mountain is filled with the tea tree, and everyone lives their life on planting it.

         The tea tree was introduced in Rui-Feng about thirty years ago. The type of plants at that time mainly were “Oolong tea,” and “Jin Xuan tea,” which is commonly named No. 27 tea. Owing to the great profit, everybody falls over each other to plant it by cutting down the original forests. And that’s the main reason why we can no longer see forests everywhere in our present time. Forests possess the ability of self-controlling the source of water. Once forests are excessively cut down, the spring of water will simultaneously be reduced. No wonder that recently our school suffers great crisis of lacking water, and we want everyone to economize the water. This enables us to think over a crucial issue. Even though the tea-planted can improve and elevate our living standard, it may bring some disadvantages at the same time. We cannot over exploit the hillside to improve our economy, for it may endanger our natural environment. In this way, we can maintain fine water and good mountains; the most important of all, keep a good quality of life.