Luna Lu/Shanghai Daily News

The largest wholesale tea market, now at Datong Road in Shanghai, will move 200 meters to Hongsheng Garden in Yongxing Road in next May, the Youth Daily reported yesterday.  The garden will be divided into four floors. The first two will be the tea business center, containing about 800 to 1000 tea shops and the other two will be used as teahouses and for exhibitions of tea sets.  Ye Shisheng, a director of the Shanghai Tea Association, explained that after 8-years of developing the market on Datong Road, the tea business there had been very successful.
The annual consumption of tea in Shanghai has increased from 300 grams per person in 1996 to more than 900 grams today.  Because of the increasing demand for tea and the limited space at  Datong Road, the original Datong tea market must move to its new premises on Yongxing Road.