Camellia for Foliage, Flowers, Fruit & Tea

d) Fukien. Fukien is a great tea-growing province with a large domestic market. A special feature is its production of flower-scented teas, for the manufacture of which there are factories in Fu-chou.

e) Wu-i Mountains. Tea has been grown around Wu-i for 1,000 years and it has been regarded as one of China's best teas and exported all over the world.

g) Chekiang The climate is humid and subtropical controlled chiefly by monsoon airflows. Chekiang has four principal tea districts:

Hang-chou district produces the famous Lung-ching (Dragon Well) green tea P'ing-shiu district has the largest tea acreage and the highest production of processed tea. Chien-te, is in the south west. Wen-chou is in the hilly south eastern region.

World War II caused serious damage to the tea industry as tea gardens were abandoned and aging shrubs were not replaced. During the 1950s a systematic rehabilitation and development program was undertaken. Improved methods of tea cultivation and processing were introduced and new orchards established, and the province resumed its position as China's leading tea producer. It is one of the most tourist-accessible tea regions, a train connects Hang-Chou with Shanghai in a couple of hours.

h) Hunan. Red and black tea are grown on the foothills of the Hsueh-feng Mountains and on Mount Mu-fu on the eastern border. The teas destined to become Oolong are brought to the factory and immediately put on to a series of conveyor belts where cold and hot air is blown over them to remove most moisture. Later, they are transferred onto rollers for 10-12 hours. This breaks down their "juices", causing the leaves to go red. Next they are cooked at 148o Celsius for 6 minutes. At this point many of the leaves are still attached to twigs. Next they are cut into strips, though the twigs are still not discarded. They go back onto a belt and into another oven, this time for 20 minutes before being cooled, and put through the process for a second time.

At this point the leaves could be used to make tea, though it would be of an inferior quality. The sorting process comes next. In several large rooms women sit at low tables, each one with a bamboo chair placed on a flat basket to catch falling leaves. Here the leaves, some in flat panniers, others in vast baskets, are meticulously sorted into thick and thin, small and big, and at last removed from their twigs. The tea is sorted several times and then the good-quality ones are packed for storage. The inferior-quality leaves will be sold cheaply at this stage.

After 6 month the packets are opened, reprocessed, graded, tasted and repacked accordingly.

Tea's medicinal properties are taken very seriously in China. The Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacology of Fujian Province has recently conducted research into the effects of tea drinking on general health. They concluded

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