Our destination is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from downtown Hangzhou.
Meijiawu Tea Village is located in the west of the world-known West Lake and hailed as "ten miles Meiwu" for its vast area along the Meiling Road, is an ancient village with a history of 600 years. It is the main production base and a protected area of the fragrant West Lake Dragon Well Tea.
The tea leaves from Meijiawu are beautiful in green color, graceful in shape, strong in fragrance and rich in flavor.
So, first, we get to look at the tea bushes, which are much larger than the bushes we've seen on the side of the road. I'm not up for becoming a tea picker any time soon, so I'll leave it to the professionals.
All tea leaves are picked by women. It takes about 8 hours to pick two kilos of leaves.
Tea leaves are still picked by hand three times a year, the first spring, by young girls about 15 or 16, the second, summer tea, picked by girls about 20 years old, and the autumn tea, called grandma tea, picked by older women.
Next, we go to the drying demonstration, three tubs with tea leaves, that have to be stirred by hand for a number of hours.
We then get the sales pitch, which extols the benefits of the green tea, which apparently good for everything. So, now we have tea and supplement pills.
The teapot fountain in the gardens is a nice touch.
Still, we had a cup or two of tea discovered the right way to make it and had a stroll about the grounds. And for that hour in the morning, it was very pleasant.
This is a about 1kg package of tea leaves. Don't ask me how many cups of tea that will make!
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