More Than Just Tea | A Day in an Organic Tea Garden in China

Some journeys are not easy but some places are worth the trip even when the road is long and it rains all the way there. When we arrived the mountains were hidden by clouds. Our host smiled and said you should come back on a sunny day and this is what we were missing. Before visiting the tea garden our host welcomed us the traditional Chinese way with tea. This wasn't the finished jasmine tea. It had only completed its first scenting but even then it already tasted incredible. The technique they are using has been passed down for more than 2,000 years. Now it's a little bit foggy. If we pluck this one but two leaves this will cost maybe 10 days to grow like this. If the sun is very strong very hot weather maybe three days so the energy is totally different. So this is why here the tea tastes better. You need to make your choice you want the quality or you want the output. Biological diversity that's the key point you know not only tea bush. You can see forests, you can see flowers, you can see grass. Everything should keep balance. If the only tea huge mountain of only tea that's a lie. That cannot keep balance. Okay so the second layer you will see the soil. The soil is very healthy. So this healthy soil can support the tea growing because we don't use chemical fertilizers. Many animals you can see many many micro leaves here. You can see the ants. Yes there's many there's a lot of world there. There's many lives in grass. There's a lot of world. Yes you can see the mosquitoes. Yes and the spiders and everything here. We were to waiting we were to cutting the grass but we only to cut at the surface. Yes the surface the level. We keep this level because the grass is very important for the soil to keep the moisture and the temperature. At a very hot time now the summer time coming right it's very hot then the temperature we are getting maybe 40 degrees centigrade. If we remove the grass totally so there's the moisture and the soil temperature will be really high. We need to keep some not let it growing taller than the tea bush. Okay we need to control it at the low level and it's very important for the leaves under the ground and also it is very important to control the moisture of the farm of the soil. Walking through the tea garden I realized something. Organic tea isn't just about how you grow tea. It's about the choices you make and choosing quality over quantity. Choosing patience over shortcuts. Soon it was time to leave the mountains but I knew I was taking much more with me than just beautiful views. But before heading home our host invited us into his tea house. Every piece of furniture here has its own story and some dating back hundreds of years to the Ming and Qing dynasties. You could feel how much he cares not just about tea but about preserving tradition. Of course one more cup of tea. In China tea is more than a drink. It's how we welcome people. And we shared a table filled with delicious Chinese food at end. We came as guests. We left feeling at home.