Japan had 124,482 acres of land occupied by tea gardens and tea plantations. These produced 60,877,975 pounds of cured tea, giving a mean yield of 489 pounds per acre. Of the more than sixty million pounds of tea produced annually on nearly two hundred square miles in Japan, less than twenty-two million pounds are consumed at home, the balance being exported at a cash value, in 1907, of $6,309,122, or a mean of sixteen cents per pound.
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Fig. 193.—Looking across a tea plantation located on the flanks of wooded hill lands rising in the background, Japan.
In China the volume of tea produced annually is much
larger than in Japan. Hosie places the annual export
from Szechwan into Tibet alone at 40,000,000 pounds and
this is produced largely in the mountainous portion of the
province west of the Min river. Richard places her direct
export to foreign countries, in 1905, at 176,027,255 pounds;
and in 1906 at 180,271,000 pounds, so that the annual
export must exceed 200,000,000 pounds, and her total product
of cured tea must be more than 400,000,000.
