Hangzhou - Longjing Tea Picking - a photo on Flickriver

Just back from a 2-week business trip to China - and it was interrupted by the long Qingming weekend that allowed for a quick trip to the tea fields of Longjing Village, where China's best green tea comes from.

Here's a short series of three pictures showing the processing steps in producing authentic Longjing Tea.

First, real Longjing Tea (龙井茶) comes only from the small mountainous area around Longjing Village near Hangzhou.

The best tea leaves (actually buds) are picked before the Qingming Festival (清明节 aka "Tomb Sweeping Day"). This is called ming qian cha (明前茶) and it is tremendously expensive - in 2012 a record price of 64,000 CNY per kilogram was achieved (64,000 CNY equals about 8,750 EUR or 9,270 USD, just to give some scale to that).
This year (2017) the prices hovered at a meager 14,500 CNY / kg, governement price regulations have kicked in...

One kilogram of dried tea is said to contain around 36,000 buds.

The tea is hand-processed, here is the first step, the picking of the buds. The preferred way of picking is nipping the buds gently with the thumb and the index finger, one bud with a leaf every time. In this way, both the bud and branch are protected.

© All Rights Reserved - you may not use this image in any form without my prior permission.

Taken in: 中國 / 浙江省 / 杭州市 (show map)

Taken on: April 3, 2017

Tags:

China

Hangzhou

Lake

Longjing

Tea

Green

first

harvest

picking

Teepflückerin

ming qian cha

grüner

Tee

中国

杭州

龙井村

龙井茶

明前茶

Sets appears in: • People • Hangzhou 杭州 more » • Df + AF-D Zoom Nikkor 70-210/4-5.6 « less

Camera: Nikon Df, f/8.0, 1/320 sec, 210mm, ISO 400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon Df
Aperture:	f/8.0
Exposure Time:	0.003 sec (1/320)
Focal Length:	210mm
ISO:	400
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	No Flash
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Gain Control:	Low gain up
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Ver.1.01
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