A documentary on Chinese tea produced in partnership with the Kennesaw State University Confucius Institute has netted six Emmy awards for production achievement in the Southeast U.S.
The hour-long show, “Chinese Tea: Elixir of the Orient,” has educated hundreds of thousands of television and online viewers on the ritualistic value and health benefits of one of the world’s most popular beverages, which originated millennia ago in China.
The film covers the historical origins of tea, its many varieties, cultural significance in forming societal bonds, preparation methods and much more.
Georgia Public Broadcasting produced and aired the show with guidance and assistance from the Confucius Institute, and the Emmys from the Southeast branch of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences went mainly to individual members of the GPB production team for lighting, directing, writing, editing and other feats of production.
The Confucius Institute is one of more than 300 Chinese-government backed entities that promotes culture and language as part of China’s “soft-power” push around the world. There are three in Georgia, with the Kennesaw institute focused on early childhood language education and Chinese language proficiency testing.
Ken Jin, the founding director of the institute and senior executive producer of the tea documentary, said the film will be the first of many produced with GPB as a partner.
“We are very excited about the awards and success of this documentary,” Jin said. “(The Confucius Institute at KSU) looks forward to continuing our partnership with GPB as we produce a series of documentaries on Chinese theater and martial arts under the brand name ‘Decoding China.’”
Interviewees, indeed, claim in the documentary that tea is a portal to understanding China’s resilience and character. It’s both refined and hardy, they say, ancient and adaptable.
China is said in the documentary to produce more than a third of the world’s tea and is home to more than 90,000 tea houses. Across the value chain, it notes that 80 million people in some way are employed by the tea sector, in production, farming, picking or sales.
See more information from Kennesaw State here.
View the full list of Southeast Emmy winners here.
Atlanta Ballet is the presenting sponsor of Global Atlanta's Culture Channel. Subscribe here for monthly Culture newsletters.