Wu Li Xia

How long have you been growing tea and what got your started?
We have been growing tea for like 30 years, I pick tea when I was very young as we usually pick tea during weekends or holiday with my mother when we don't have to go to school, so it's one of our family businesses. Well. It's hard to tell how we get started, we started just as our parents do like hundreds of years straight, we lived in a mountain city, it's also a tourism city, there is very little factory to work for, and children and young generations are working and settled in larger city, and growing tea is indeed a decent income in the whole year especially in spring tea season for us elder tea farmers.

What is your favorite part of growing tea?
I would say tea gathering, though it's the toughest work because we have to bend our waist all day, though it's backbreaking work but we enjoy it as we have our neighbors together talking and working and at each end of day it gets paid for.

Can you describe a typical day out in the field?
We get up very early in the morning and bring our lunch box which we made yesterday because sometimes it is very far from home, we will have lunch among tea garden and we get back with our full basket of tea leaves. And we have to run against time as when tea sprouts, it flourishes very quickly, the tender the valuable.

What do you think makes your tea unique or better than others?
Our tea is on high mountains, we have to ride along way and then walk a long way, we even don't have time back to have lunch back at home, there is little factory here as our city is an international tourism city, heavy industry is not allowed to build here, look at the gardens here, they are just among many others mountains, the air is refreshing.

Are there any tips you can give on how to best brew your tea?
We usually have ceramic tea cups to serve guest and serves very hot, however, the tender early spring tea is not for ourselves they are expensive, and the water we brew tea is very important, people told us it taste better here than they back to the city they live as we always have spring water or well water as opposed to tap water, it's tastier.