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The aroma of the leaves as they are tossed and turned in a large wok is enough to melt the exhaustion of a hard day's work in the fields, avers one migrant worker in Wenjiashan of Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province.
 
Among the many kinds of tea in China, perhaps the most well-known is the Longjing green tea grown in Hangzhou of East China's Zhejiang Province.

Currently priced at some 4,000 yuan (US$517) per kilogram, the fresh Longjing tea picked and dried before April 5 is a traditional top-ranking gift among the Chinese.

For migrant tea pickers, tea farmers and teahouse managers, however, the famed tea means more than the enchanting fragrance.

Every March, Luo Jinying travels from her hometown of Quzhou to Wenjiashan where she works as a tea picker for a local planter.

Longjing, or Dragon Well Tea, known as the best green tea in the country, has long been grown in the mountains around West Lake in Hangzhou. Its production dates back almost 1,200 years.

Wenjiashan is one of the main Longjing tea-growing areas in the city, and covers 43 hectares.

Green tea is growing faster than ever this year, owing to the unusually warm winter. So Luo has been called back earlier by the planter to help harvest the tea.

The 40-year-old Zhejiang native gets up at 6 am. After a simple breakfast, she and 10 other tea pickers head for the fields nearby, with a bamboo basket tied around the waist and a bamboo hat to keep off the sun.

They disperse into the terraced green hills, where the tea plants grow to no more than one meter. Each picker is responsible for a single row. Once this is done, it's on to the next row.

For thousands of years, tea drinking has been linked with the idea of harmony with nature and distancing from worldly concerns.

According to Luo, the traditional way to harvest the tea is to use the left hand to push away the branches to reveal the new tea leaves, then pluck them with the right hand from the top to the side, or from the outside to the inside.

"The ideal tea pickers are young girls, who are dexterous with their hands and work neatly," said Luo.

However, the young country girls, many of whom are well schooled, show little interest in this temporary job. They prefer to work stable hours in factories in the city, she said.

The freshly-picked leaves make their way into huge woks where they will be heated to bring out the fragrance.
 
"Only the illiterate elderly or mid-aged women like me pick tea," she added.

A good tea picker generally harvests 2 kilograms of fresh leaves in 10 hours, with means a payment of 30 yuan (US$3.9) per day, plus free meals and accommodation provided by the local tea grower.

"Honestly, I do not like this job because it is too hard," Luo said bitterly.

"My waist aches as I stand too long; my fingers are always frozen in the cold mornings; in summer I have to bear the powerful heat of the midday sun," she said.

However, Luo appreciates her employer's offer of suntan lotion even though she is often too busy to remember the extra protection.

Occasionally, she gets to taste a cup of the freshly-made West Lake Longjing tea, which can fetch as much as 4,000 yuan (US$517) per kilogram in March.

"I just cannot understand why it is so expensive?" she shook her head. "There is no great difference between the green tea grown in West Lake and that in my hometown, which is just 40 yuan (US$5) per kilogram."

However, Luo loves the pure and fresh smell of the tea being processed in the homes. "It melts away the exhaustion of the day," she said.

The spring tea harvest usually lasts one month, until the middle of April. After that, most of the migrant tea pickers will leave the village. But Luo will remain, working as a maid for the tea grower, and then to harvest the summer tea from May to October.

The mother of two hates to be away from home for so long, especially as her husband works in Shanghai, which means her children have to look after themselves.

"My dream is to build a three-story house for my children, which requires over 100,000 yuan (US$12,926). I know it will take years to make such a huge amount, but my husband and I are really trying. Once we achieve this goal, my life as a tea picker in Hangzhou will end," Luo said.

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.

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.

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.

The best Longjing Tea is made in the week before April 5, or the Pure Brightness Festival (Qingming). Known as Mingqian (before Qingming), such Longjing tea is "green in hue, strong in fragrance, mellow in taste and pretty in appearance".

"My tea is always booked out by regular customers who don't trust unknown shops outside. There are many fake West Lake Longjing tea products in the market," he said.

"My customers won't drink the tea themselves. They keep it as a top-grade gift," Wang added.

Every year, Wang keeps no more than 10 kilograms of Longjing tea for himself. He sips three cups of tea a day, a habit he believes has kept him in good health.

At Hefang Street, a popular tourism spot in Hangzhou, the Taiji Teahouse has drawn a lot of attention this spring with a new kind of tea that is more affordable.

Manager Zheng Xiaochun said no teahouse in Hangzhou is offering West Lake Longjing tea made this year, as the cost, about 100 yuan (US$12.9) per cup, is beyond the reach of ordinary customers.

The teahouse offers Qiantang Longjing tea, which is grown outside Hangzhou and priced at 600 to 1,600 yuan (US$77-207) per kilogram.

Zheng, 31, said West Lake Longjing will be widely available in the teahouses by the end of April, when the price drops to 1,000 yuan (US$129) per kilogram.

The warm winter this year has resulted in slightly bigger tea leaves.

But Zheng said the quality of Longjing can be guaranteed.

Most patrons to Zheng's teahouse are aged between 50 and 60, and most of them come from South China.

Loyal tea lovers, called "laochaqiang" by the locals, prefer tea grown after the Pure Brightness Festival, as the leaves are tougher, and the taste much stronger. More importantly, the price is also more affordable, Zheng said.

(China Daily March 20, 2007)