Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/embed/RQu5oSWeTWc
In recent days, tea merchants from Songyang have dominated Douyin’s top 10 tea livestream sales rankings, frequently taking eight spots. Daily online order volumes have peaked at over 100,000. With a well-established industrial system and a leading production scale, “selling tea via the cloud” continues to gain strong momentum.
“Folks, look at this color and smell this aroma—this is the first-picked high-mountain fragrant tea!” At the Southern Zhejiang Tea Market, streamer Zhou Qiang from the Yicha Xiaoye livestream studio skillfully showcases tea leaves to his smartphone camera. On the other side of the screen, thousands of viewers watch in real time, while orders pour in from provinces such as Henan, Hubei, and Shaanxi. “On Douyin alone, our highest single-day sales have exceeded RMB 1 million,” Zhou said. His team now has 1.46 million followers and has achieved strong results during this year’s spring tea season, consistently ranking among the top three tea sellers on the platform.
E-commerce has not only boosted tea sales but also increased local employment and incomes. Wang Yipeng, a post-90s second-generation tea entrepreneur, runs a tea business in Beishan Village, Xiping Subdistrict. Each day, he moves through the tea market—observing color, smelling aroma—while taking nearly 800,000 followers on a “virtual tour” of the market. “We focus on the superior quality of Songyang tea and the stable supply from its origin,” Wang said. This year, his online sales have averaged about 500 kg of dried tea per day. To ensure timely delivery, his company has hired more than 40 local villagers for packaging work. In Songyang, there are around 10,000 people engaged in e-commerce, and among nearly 1,000 active online businesses, more than 70% are related to tea. E-commerce has become a new engine driving the transformation and upgrading of the tea industry. In 2025, Songyang’s above-designated-size tea e-commerce sales reached RMB 778 million, marking a year-on-year increase of 113.6%.
As the industry grows rapidly, supporting infrastructure is crucial. In recent years, Songyang has implemented the “Return and Build Dreams” e-commerce initiative by constructing new specialized tea markets, establishing supply chain service platforms, and upgrading public distribution centers. These measures have continuously improved the supporting ecosystem—driving development through better services and consolidating momentum through an optimized environment—while accelerating the transition from traditional to modern agriculture. Against this backdrop, supply chain businesses such as packaging design, warehousing, and logistics have emerged. Songyang Huizhong Packaging Materials Co., Ltd., founded less than two years ago, now handles over 2 million orders per month. It produces an average of 30,000 tea tins and 60,000 cartons daily, with 90% of its business coming from local e-commerce clients. “From design to finished product, we can generally deliver within 48 hours,” said General Manager Yuan Junwei. Compared with factories outside the region, localized production of tea packaging reduces packaging and logistics costs by 15% to 20%.
From the traditional “cash-for-goods” model to today’s “livestream sales and data-driven logistics,” Songyang’s tea distribution network is expanding rapidly. Within this evolving landscape, the new tea market project stands out. Phase I and Phase II construction began in 2025, aiming to build the nation’s largest comprehensive tea trading and distribution hub operating across all categories and time periods. “This is more than just a marketplace—it will be a future e-commerce and supply chain hub,” said Cai Hao, Party Secretary and Director of the County Bureau of Commerce. Looking ahead, Songyang will continue to leverage e-commerce to integrate primary, secondary, and tertiary industries—upgrading markets, innovating business formats, enhancing services, and extending industrial chains. The goal is to turn specialty agricultural products from occasional hits into sustained traffic drivers, while enabling more returning young people to become part of a new generation of digital farmers.
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