Livestreaming hosts come to the Southern Zhejiang Tea Market to help sell this year's spring tea, using livestreaming platforms. [Photo/lsnews.com.cn]

The spring tea trading season recently began in earnest at the Southern Zhejiang Tea Market -- in Songyang county, administered by Lishui city in East China's Zhejiang province -- with this year's proceedings kicking off earlier than previously, according to local media.

What was also different from recent years was that due to the livestreaming e-commerce boom in China, a number of livestreaming hosts came to the market to sell the tea using their smart phones.

Fu Yongqiang was one of the hosts. Only 28 years old, he has been making and selling tea for nearly a decade. Last year, when family business was shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic, Fu turned to online channels to sell the commodity and sold nearly 40 tons in half a year.

As soon as the tea market opened this year, he registered a Douyin account and began selling tea on it. With his professional knowledge of tea, Fu has amassed 11,000 fans and sold 0.75 tons of tea in just one week, earning 750,000 yuan ($115,935).

According to preliminary statistics of the year to date, livestreaming hosts can sell more than 4 million yuan of spring tea every day, accounting for about 20 percent of the daily turnover of the whole market.

"In 2020, Songyang established more than 1,300 tea online shops, with online retail sales hitting 1.08 billion yuan, an increase of 84.69 percent compared with previous years," said Pan Xianbao, deputy director of the economic and commercial bureau of Songyang county.

"Online tea sales alone have created more than 5,600 jobs for locals," Pan added.