Tea Tasting

During the afternoon, we visited the Long Jing Tea plantation in Hangzhou. As a tea obsessive, someone who always likes a nice cup of tea at night, I loved this. Hangzhou is famous for its "Dragon Well" tea, which is the national tea of China. Long Jing tea is made from young leaves on tea plants, giving it a richer flavor that is preserved, along with its natural antioxidants, when the tea is pan-dried immediately after picking. At the plantation, we saw huge slopes of tea bushes climbing up into the mountain on terraces, green hills disappearing into the mist.
We had a tea-tasting session instructed by a man called "Dr. Tea," who taught us all the secrets of green tea as well as its importance to the Chinese. As he spoke, we learned the proper way to receive and drink tea according to ancient Chinese customs. The tea we were drinking was in the form of "loose tea," or tea without a tea-bag. We learned to snub our noses at tea bags, for they destroy all of the natural vitamins and antioxidants within tea. The Chinese do not "drink" a cup of tea, rather, they "eat" a cup of tea, for all of the loose tea leaves are left to swirl about in the cup and can be eaten.

The loose tea was delicious--rich in flavor and especially good for the health, from what I was told. I had never drank tea that way before, but I couldn't wait to bring the custom home to my family, and so I purchased a couple of cans of the Dragon Well tea.