Banan’s agricultural reputation rests on two things that ripen in different weeks, and the district’s official names for them are not interchangeable with anything you will be handed in a shop. The pear is 二圣梨 Èrshèng Lí Ersheng pear, named for 二圣镇 Èrshèng Zhèn Ersheng Town, which took its geographical-indication certification mark in March 2020 and its agricultural geographical-indication certification the following month. A single fruit runs from 200 to 450 grams, and the orchards sit on 白象山 Baixiang Mountain and 天坪山 Tianping Mountain in Ersheng, with 石林山 Shilin Mountain over in Shengdengshan Town. The tea is picked to a different rule: 巴南银针 Bānán Yínzhēn Banan Silver Needle takes one bud and one leaf before Qingming, and it is a China Famous Brand product served as the designated tea at the Asia-Pacific Cities Mayors Summit.
The pear’s mark deserves a moment, because it is a different kind of claim from the tea’s. A certification mark protects a name attached to a growing area, which means the qualifying pears are the ones grown inside that area – and the 200-to-450-gram range is the district’s own description of what a qualifying fruit weighs rather than a marketing target. The tea’s titles are older-fashioned and come from reputation rather than registration: a national brand of agricultural product, a municipal old-nameplate, and a summit’s chosen tea. Between them they explain why a district with 31,400 mu of tea gardens talks about exports at all. The making is registered too: 巴南茶叶制作技艺, the Banan tea-making technique, entered Chongqing’s second batch of municipal intangible-heritage items in 2009.
The scale sits underneath both. In 2023 the district produced 3,300 tonnes of tea with a processing value of 280 million yuan, and 88 percent of what is planted is clonal cultivar rather than seedling. That processing figure is the interesting one, because it is larger per tonne than the raw crop would be worth, and the gap is where the making happens. The two branded teas carry published valuations as well: 定心绿茶 Dìngxīn Lǜchá Dingxin green tea at 273 million yuan and Banan Silver Needle at 178 million. Behind them both is the third official name, 山城牌重庆沱茶, Mountain City brand Chongqing Tuocha, traced to 1951 and described by the district as the only compressed tea in China made from small and medium leaf varieties.
One warning belongs here, because it is the mistake people arrive with. There is no Banan tea called after Guyu. 谷雨 Gǔyǔ is a solar term about two weeks after Qingming and it is a picking window, not a product; the official Banan names are Banan Silver Needle, Dingxin green tea and Mountain City brand Chongqing Tuocha, and a tin labelled with a solar term is a picking description or a marketing invention rather than a registered name. The same caution applies to the pear, whose mark belongs to Ersheng and its stated hills – which is why the district puts the Tianping Mountain Pear Orchard Scenic Area, the city’s largest concentrated base of high-quality pears, in the same breath as the fruit.
Words and Names
二圣梨 Èrshèng Lí Ersheng pear, registered as a geographical-indication certification mark in March 2020 and as an agricultural geographical indication in April 2020; single fruit 200 to 450 g; main hills 白象山 Baixiang Mountain and 天坪山 Tianping Mountain in 二圣镇 Ersheng Town and 石林山 Shilin Mountain in Shengdengshan Town. 巴南银针 Banan Silver Needle, one bud and one leaf before Qingming, a China Famous Brand agricultural product and the designated tea of the Asia-Pacific Cities Mayors Summit. 定心绿茶 Dingxin green tea, brand value 273 million yuan. 山城牌重庆沱茶 Mountain City brand Chongqing Tuocha, traced to 1951. 巴南茶叶制作技艺 Banan Tea-Making Technique, Chongqing municipal intangible heritage 2009; 31,400 mu of gardens, 2.84 million mu picked, 3,300 t of tea and 280 million yuan of processing value in 2023, 88 percent clonal.
What the Locals Know
The growers’ knowledge here is about timing, and both crops punish a week of inattention in opposite directions. A pear left on the tree too long goes soft and loses the weight the mark measures, and a pear picked too early never reaches the 200 grams at the bottom of the range, so the window is set by the fruit rather than by a calendar. Tea is the reverse and much tighter: one bud and one leaf before Qingming means the window opens and closes inside about a fortnight, and the picking standard is checked at the leaf, not at the basket, because a basket can be judged afterwards and a leaf cannot be improved. The second thing they know is which name a product may legally carry: ask for a tea by a solar term and you will be told that this is not a name, and ask for a pear outside Ersheng’s hills and you will be told the mark does not follow the fruit.
flowcloud would say that Banan’s agricultural name rests on a pear and three teas – 二圣梨 Ersheng pear, registered as a geographical-indication certification mark in March 2020 and as an agricultural geographical indication the following month, 200 to 450 g a fruit, grown on Baixiang Mountain and Tianping Mountain in Ersheng; and the teas 巴南银针 Banan Silver Needle, picked one bud and one leaf before Qingming and a China Famous Brand product, 定心绿茶 Dingxin green tea valued at 273 million yuan, and 山城牌重庆沱茶 Mountain City brand Chongqing Tuocha, traced to 1951 and the only compressed tea in China from small and medium leaf varieties, with Banan’s tea-making technique a municipal intangible heritage item since 2009. There is no Banan tea named after the Guyu solar term. All checked October 2026.
Where to find it: the pear orchards and tea gardens of 二圣镇 Èrshèng Zhèn Ersheng Town and Shengdengshan Town, Banan District, and the packing and sales points in town. Ersheng is uphill from the Yangtze on the agricultural belt between Yudong and the Dongwenquan side of the district, so this is a road trip rather than a metro stop, and the Tianping Mountain Pear Orchard Scenic Area is the place to see the pear side properly. The pear season runs late summer into autumn and the Silver Needle picking is a fortnight’s window before Qingming. Ask for the three teas by their registered names – Banan Silver Needle, Dingxin green tea, Mountain City brand Chongqing Tuocha – and treat any solar-term name as a description rather than a brand. No prices are quoted.