In 1959, Cai Liangsui was born in Beishan Village, Bailin Town, a hub for exporting Bailin Gongfu tea. It was the early days of the communal period, and a ten-minute walk from his home towards the port led to one of the raw material bases of the state-owned Fuding Tea Factory's Wengjiang Tea Farm.
In the spring of 1970, young Cai Liangsui followed his father, who was pioneering tea cultivation, running through the raw tea gardens of Wengjiang Tea Farm. Meanwhile, in Keling Village of Tongshan Street, about ten kilometers away, Chen Lirong was born. As the eldest daughter, she was fostered in her grandmother's home in Nanqian Village near the sea, a key stop for Bailin Gongfu tea boats heading out to sea. She fondly recalls the seaside life in Nanqian Village.
In the early 1980s, young Cai Liangsui was elected as a village cadre, his first job being the tea garden management secretary for Kengliyang Village, the administrative village of Beishan. Later, he graduated from Fu'an Normal School with ambitions of becoming a respectable teacher. He walked the ancient Shushuling Trail from Beishan to Bailin Town, eventually becoming a full-time Youth League secretary at the No. 4 Middle School, occasionally teaching geography. He often said that this was when he finally wore leather shoes.
Simultaneously, Chen Lirong excelled in middle school but, due to the pressures of being the eldest daughter in a rural family, chose to attend a tuition-free teacher training school. After graduation, she became a full-time Chinese teacher in Guanling Town, the northern gate of Fuding. Through a friend's introduction, she met Cai Liangsui, who was then a secretary in Dieshi Township.
Their life trajectories intersected spatially but were temporally out of sync until they finally met. Cai Liangsui would travel to Guanling Town every week to visit Chen Lirong, a journey that took over two hours by an old jeep. Later, they planted a "couple's forest" in Beishan, earning them the nickname "Tea Mountain Heroes."
In 2000, Chen Lirong's family opened a tea factory in Beishan. The following year, Cai Liangsui named it Yurong Farm, a grand name derived from a homophone of "Lirong." They began producing Fuding White Tea. In 2010, Cai Liangsui retired early to devote himself fully to the family's tea production. In 2013, a fire at the factory prompted Chen Lirong to resign from her teaching job and move to Beijing, the then-hub of the tea industry, adopting the nickname "White Tea Lady." Cai Liangsui became "White Tea Lord," and together, they formed a business partnership, each contributing to production and promotion, though not without significant hardships.
The natural conditions of the mountains led White Tea Lord to commit to organic tea production and establish his own white tea laboratory. His dedication, akin to a teacher’s diligence, reflected in his tea journey. He became a Fuding White Tea intangible cultural heritage inheritor and a principal drafter of national white tea standards, earning numerous honors and responsibilities rooted in five decades of tea cultivation.
In 2015, while filling out a producer's profile, White Tea Lord listed his wife and son as his most treasured possessions. Reflecting on their lives, White Tea Lady realized that tea was always at the heart of their story, leading to the creation of the following documentary.
