BEIJING, China — Around mid to late March each year, farmers in southeastern Chinese city of Hangzhou are busy picking tea leaves. The Longjing tea, a precious Chinese green tea specially grown in Hangzhou, needs to be collected within one to two weeks to maintain its tender nature.
Named after its birthplace, Longjing Village, the renowned green tea has around 1,200 years’ history. The very finest tea shoots are traditionally picked and processed in spring before the Qingming Festival in early April.
Longjing tea is distinguished among Chinese green teas in taste and fame, thus dubbed the “Queen of Chinese green tea.” The harvested tea leaves will go through 10 hours of processing, including ventilating, drying, screening and frying.
To maintain the quality and production, as well as preserving the traditional processing techniques, Hangzhou has issued a regulation to protect the Longjing tea planting area and standardize the industry. Hangzhou also holds celebrations for the Longjing tea each year.
In this video, British journalist Josh Arslan heads to Hangzhou to experience the core process of tea production and look for the secrets of producing the time-honored green tea.
In Longjing Village, Josh meets a father-son duo engaged in tea production. From them, he learns the picking and frying techniques of fine Longjing tea. The video is filmed and produced by China Matters.
