The job of picking tea leaves is best suited to young girls with dexterity as great care must be exercised in the way the leaves are plucked.(Photo: China Daily) Photo Gallery>>>

    In the living room of a three-story house, Wang Shuzhou toasts the freshly-picked tea leaves in an electric wok.

    The 64-year-old owns half a hectare of Longjing tea in Wenjiashan.

    He has recruited 12 helpers from nearby Jiangxi Province this year, including 10 women to harvest the tea, and two men to help process it.

    The father of two entered the tea business at 19. He said every new hand should first learn to handle the firewood before the tea is processed.

    Firewood was widely used to heat the wok in which the tea was toasted before the 1980s. Controlling the temperature was very important for tea production, he explained.

    There are two important steps involved after the fresh leaves are pressed into a big bamboo basket where they are left to dry for a few hours.

    The first is called "qingguo" and is aimed at drying and shaping the tea by hand pressure for 15 minutes, with the temperature at 220 C. After this, the leaves are heated and tossed for 20 minutes at 160-180 C. This step is called "huiguo".

    "In general, it takes about seven hours to produce one kilogram of tea," he said.

    In the 1960s, more than 100 local men took part in the tea processing, while women harvested the tea all year round.

    "We worked from 6 am to 10 pm every day during the peak season, with a payment of just 1 yuan per day for each person. To keep our spirits up, we sang folk songs or Yueju Opera," said Wang.

    Thanks to the economic reforms since the 1980s, farmers have developed their own private businesses. Wang has been involved in the tea business for a decade. His daughters are managing silk businesses in tourist attractions, given the ever-increasing number of people visiting scenic Hangzhou from all over the country and the world.

    While tea is no longer the Wang family's only source of income, he believes making tea is a traditional cultural heritage that demands to be preserved.

[1] [2] [3] [4]