The 1st stop for the day is a tea plantation, located in LongJing Village (龍井村), where the place is being developed and the tourist number is boosting.
LongJing ( 龍井, literally means “Dragon Well”). According to the legend, the Dragon Well was discovered in 230 AD. This fresh spring water encouraged the HangZhou people to grow and develop their own quality tea, and thus, LongJing Tea was born.
LongJing Tea is one the top list of the 10 most famous green teas in China, and so does its selling price.
The taxi driver told us the local people won’t drink LongJing Tea because it’s too pricey. When they buy LongJing Tea, normally it’s not for their own consumption but to give it away as a gift to please their boss or elderly. And that’s also one of the reasons why the price of the tea has been pushed to the higher end.
The dominant thing here is of course the tea, in the form of drinking, picking, smelling or buying.
One of the common scene in LongJing Village.
Again, my brother has been to this village before. Thus, he asked the driver to drove us into town center and look for a tea house for tea drinking. Apparently, this is one of popular activities in the village.
We asked the driver to drop us in a good tea house. And he dropped us here. When we walked inside the shop, a friendly woman came out to greet and lead us to the roof top, the place for guests to drink tea.
Standing on her roof top, we could get to see everywhere is tea plantation.
The fresh leaves…
and the leaves after stir-frying.
After we were seated, the woman simply throw a punch of LongJing leaves into a pot, then pour hot water inside it. This is out of my expectation, cause I thought she would has brew the tea nicely, in the traditional and proper way, like we used to see from a movie.
Sitting at this open air roof top area was not a pleasant one. Due to the hot sun shinning so brightly above our head, we could barely open up our eyes.
Anyway, since we were here, we cheered one another with the green tea.
Probably the woman had put too many leaves into the pot, the taste of the green tea is too bitter for our liking.
Jessy Lee
Kevin
Nicholas Lee
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