An One-Day Tea-leaf Picking experience is just the beginning

“Harvesting tea leaves is not an easy task. It’s almost two hours and the leaves only filled half a bag. We only pick the top part of the tree: a bud and two leaves!” 

The one-day tea making tour is a memorable experience. This is the first time for us to pick tea leaves. We were lucky to have a cloudy day in early spring, yet bending our waists for an hour and a half still made us exhausted. 

I thought it’s only one day and the experience was just for fun, however, this ended up becoming a training session for a much longer journey - a class for tea making.

2 months after this tea picking day, we started our tea making class. Our teacher has a large organic tea farm. Without pesticide, the tea green leafhopper (Jacobiasca formosana) keeps biting the tea leaves which becomes curly and withered. I only discovered from this class that If we don’t pick them, the tea leaves will fall down eventually. 

It’s amazing to look at the “one bud two leaves” in my hand. It is what contributes the natural honey notes inside the tea. 

Also, picking the top part of the tea can stimulate them to grow. If we don’t pick, they will become too old or those bitten by the leafhopper will drop anyway. It’s such a waste.

That day was early summer and we picked quickly when there’s no rain. Tea picking is like an addiction. Once you begin, you simply cannot stop and your eyes keep catching the “one bud two leaves”. However, we still felt tired after one and a half hour, then went back to have some nice cups of tea. 

Our teacher is so nice that he asked us to bring those tea back home for us to make some tea! 

I didn’t imagine that we would start this tea making journey so soon…