Anxi Opens Its 2026 Tieguanyin Season, With a Robot Working the Crowd

Anxi County opened its 2026 spring Tieguanyin season on April 14 at Yunling Tea Manor in Lutian township, with growers calling out "kai cha luo," tea opens, across the hills to mark the start of picking, Southeast Net and Quanzhou Evening News reported.

Nine tea masters performed a ceremonial tea offering, and the first group of village-level custodians of Anxi's centuries-old Tieguanyin tea-culture tradition received certificates for the role, the outlets said. A Unitree robot greeted arriving guests at the gate and ran through a kung fu routine, while a brewing robot nicknamed Cha Xiaoniu, Tea Little Bull, demonstrated an automated pour alongside the human ceremony.

The event also served as a showcase for the county's processing infrastructure: satellite monitoring of the tea gardens, a 5G-linked processing line, and automated sorting equipment, organizers said. Ten tea-technology investment deals were signed on site, covering automated processing and extraction ventures.

Buyers had already signed purchase contracts for more than 5,800 metric tons (about 6,400 US tons) of the coming spring crop by opening day, about a quarter of the season's expected total output, according to the reports, an early read on how much of this year's Tieguanyin is already spoken for. Anxi's tea industry association also signed a cross-strait cooperation agreement with a Taiwanese tea arts group to expand cultural exchange and technical cooperation.

The county's full tea industry chain, farm to cup, was worth 46.05 billion yuan (about US$6.4 billion) in 2025, and Tieguanyin has topped China's tea-brand valuation rankings for a tenth consecutive year running, the reports said, citing local government figures released at the event.

Sources: China News Service Fujian (via Southeast Net), 2026安溪铁观音开茶季启幕; CNR (via Quanzhou Evening News), 2026安溪铁观音开茶季启幕.