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With the wave of technological advancements, many tea-related institutions, research organizations, and companies have actively embraced change. They leverage technology to empower the entire tea industry’s value chain, continuously exploring innovations that infuse sustainable development into the tea industry. In a series of articles, we document the intelligentization explorations at various stages of tea cultivation in China.

The emergence of smart tea gardens has enabled precision and automation in tea garden management. By comprehensively sensing, managing, analyzing, and sharing data, these systems allow for the monitoring and management of tea plants throughout their entire growth cycle.

The Rise of a Visual Beverage Icon
Tiger Sugar (老虎堂), a Taiwanese beverage phenomenon, revolutionized the global drink scene in 2017 by introducing the world’s first “edible art” – the iconic black sugar tiger-striped cup. As the originator of this viral aesthetic, the brand quickly captivated Gen Z and young professionals with its Instagram-worthy drinks, positioning itself as a leader in the premium milk tea category.

Product Innovation: Beyond the Hype
Unlike generic bubble tea chains, Tiger Sugar leans into its Taiwanese roots with a “black-centric” menu divided into four distinct categories:

Spanning a 1.5 kilometer waterfront and encompassing 17,000 square meters of riverside space, the 2024 Shanghai International Coffee Culture Festival has kicked off with vigor as part of the “Double Five Shopping Festival” in the airy Xuhui riverside area. This year’s event, themed “Taste the World in Shanghai,” focuses on “internationalization” and “boosting consumption,” further polishing Shanghai’s new calling card of “coffee culture.”

Building on the success of the previous three editions, this year’s “Coffee Culture Week” has been elevated to a “Coffee Culture Festival,” becoming a highly influential urban festival IP. How does a simple cup of coffee meet the developmental stride of Shanghai city? Shanghai answers: Coffee is not just a drink; it is a medium that continuously enriches the coffee culture, innovates coffee consumption scenarios, and blends international perspectives with local innovations. Traditional culture and contemporary trends merge with commercial forms and cultural sentiment, making the aromatic fragrance of coffee a vibrant footnote to the city’s “open, innovative, and inclusive” character, adding a lively touch to the city’s soft power.

“Green color, mellow taste, rich aroma, and beautiful shape” is a textual summary of Longjing tea quality. However, this textual standard no longer meets the current needs. Developing a “visible” and “tangible” “National Standard Sample of Longjing Tea” has become a consensus among all parties.

On April 15, the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs released the “Sensory Grading Standard Samples of Longjing Tea,” which is the first national standard sample of Longjing tea and currently the only effective national standard sample of tea in Zhejiang Province. Its creation ends the history of Longjing tea lacking a national standard sample and marks the establishment of a unified Longjing tea product control mechanism based on textual and physical standards.