Sitting at HangZhou station with Glen, our ops director, waiting to catch a train back to ShangHai, having a refreshing cup of oolong tea and reflecting on what has been a very special day indeed for both of us. In the morning we said farewell to Robin Lavoij from Van Rees Toronto, who arranged such a good trip to Vietnam for me and then joined us on the China leg too.
Our wonderful host here in HangZhou (one of the 6 ancient capitals of China), Liu Zhiming head of ShanShan Tea, took us to visit Dragonwell (LongJing in Mandarin) just outside of HangZhou City. If you are a tea taster or tea lover then Dragonwell tea would be right up there as the most famous tea in the world and somewhere I have always wanted to visit. Zhiming told us that Dragonwell is still regarded as the highest ranked tea in China.
Local people would come to the deep well here and pray for rain, which often seemed to work, and is obviously very good for the tea and other crops grown in the region.
Dragonwell is so named because if you stir the top of the water with a stick, which we did, then the ripples on the surface of the water resemble a dragon
On the way to visit the ancient site we stopped at a small tea field just at the side of the main road as 3 women were plucking the small and widely spaced tea bushes.
We took some photos and filmed a few shots and Zhiming talked to the women. They were plucking only the finest and softest leaves and buds from the tips of the bushes. Hundreds of white butterflies accompanied them!
They were a family who owned 8 rows of tea bushes and handmade Dragonwell green tea at their family home in the nearby village.
We were thrilled when we were invited back to see how they made one of the finest of the world’s green teas. They were quick to tell us that the very best Dragonwell tea is made between mid-March and the first week in April, but we would still see green tea from the “middle crop”.
They dried the tea we had seen them pluck on bamboo trays for a couple of hours, then rolled the leaves by hand and transferred the leaf to what appeared to be a large electric wok just inside the front door to their house. This is “pan-frying” at its most gentle and enough to lock in all of the sweet fresh flavours of the young tea leaves. Within a few hours we had drunk the tea we had seen plucked earlier in the day. I even ate the leaves it was so good. We all bought some of this very special tea to bring home to New Zealand with us feeling very privileged to have been invited to experience this.
Zhiming came up with the best quote if the day, “This really is Fair Trade” he said and we both thought he was spot on is, personally bought with cash straight from the growers house!
