Lhasa (July 2) XINHUA - It has been a long, long wait for the tea-loving people of Tibet. But finally they are able to sip their very own locally grown tea.

Since the 7th century Tibetans have been partial to tea, but climate and prevailing conditions stopped them from growing their own tea.

Now Tibetans can drink tea produced from a local farm in Yi'ong, a beautiful place in west China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

About 2,250 meters above the sea level on the north slope of Himalayas, Yi'ong is an ideal place for growing tea.

In the summer season the monsoon winds from the Indian Ocean bring plenty of rain to the farmland, filling the valley with mists and fog, and in winter, the Nyainqentangla Range blocks the cold wave from the north.

Tibetan people formed the habit of drinking tea in the 7th century. In the pastoral areas, herdsmen placed brick-shaped tea in bamboo bags outside their tents to express their wish for a wealthy life, and in rural areas, the farmers usually boil a pot of tea beside their fields to drink away their fatigue.

In spite of the Tibetans' addiction to tea, no tea trees had been planted in the region, and all the tea was bought from the interior areas of the country, until the new tea farm was established not long ago.

Knowing the Tibetan's love of teas, the central government sent groups of scientists and technicians from the 1960s to carry out experiments on tea tree planting in southeast part of the region, which proved successful in Yi'ong.

Free from any industrial pollution, the farm has 140 ha of planting area and can produce 200 tons of green tea and Tibetan tea a year.

The tea trees can be plucked after 10 years of growing, longer than that in the interior areas. But the harvest season extends to five months a year in Yi'ong, and the per unit output is four times that of the farms in the interior areas.