CCTV News: The rain moistens the fragrance of spring tea, and it is the right time to pick it. At present, the major tea gardens in the core production areas of West Lake Longjing, Hangzhou, Zhejiang have ushered in the peak picking period. Today's "Cultural China Tour", let us walk into the tea garden together and feel the fragrance of tea.
Early in the morning, tea farmers in the continuous green tea mountains wore straw hats and bamboo baskets, busy shuttled between the tea ridges, and put clusters of tender "two leaves and one buds" into the basket. Longjing tea is produced in the surrounding mountains of Longjing Village, West Lake, so it is named "Longjing" after its village. According to records, the name "West Lake Longjing" originated in the Song and Yuan dynasties, was heard in the Ming Dynasty, and flourished in the Qing Dynasty. It is said that when Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty visited West Lake in Hangzhou, he praised the Longjing tea in West Lake, and regarded the eighteen tea trees in front of the Hugong Temple at the foot of Shifeng Mountain as imperial tea. Celebrities of all dynasties left many poems, paintings, calligraphy, songs and other works praising the Longjing tea in West Lake.
In 2008, the production skills of West Lake Longjing were included in the national intangible cultural heritage list. The most critical step is to finish and dry the fresh leaves through frying.
Intangible cultural heritage inheritor Sun Qi told reporters that from the time of about 150 grams of fresh leaves to the completion of finishing, it often needs to be fried continuously at a pot temperature of about 250 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. In addition to being unable to stop your hands, you also have to focus on yourself. Only in this way can you get the full fragrance and fresh taste of West Lake Longjing. Every step embodies the wisdom of generations of tea farmers.
Now, from traditional planting to smart ecological tea gardens, more and more intelligent technology equipment "displays their magical powers" in tea garden farming. At the top of the 8-meter-high column, the anti-frost fan automatically turns on when the temperature is low, stirring the relatively warm air at high altitude to the tea tree canopy to protect the quality and yield of the new tea; the insect situation measurement and reporting system, meteorological monitoring system and soil moisture monitoring station, etc., let managers know the temperature, humidity and pest conditions in the tea garden kilometer away on the display screen of the operating room.
In Meijiawu Village, the core production area of Longjing, West Lake, Xu Mingjun, a new tea man born in the 90s, is helping tourists record beautiful moments in the tea garden through drone shooting. As a computer major, he had the idea of integrating tea gardens with tourism as early as college. While providing tourists with tea picking, stir-frying and tea-making experiences, he also designed multiple shooting locations to create a one-stop service of "tea picking + photo shooting".
With the hard work and simple efforts of countless tea villages, the history and culture of West Lake Longjing tea has been passed down and has become a "good national drink product". West Lake Longjing has also been used as a "national gift" many times, becoming the "golden" business card for spreading China's excellent traditional culture. Last summer, as the bilingual intangible cultural heritage tea culture ambassador, Guo Zhen, a villager from Lingyin Baile Bridge in Xihu Street, Hangzhou, brought West Lake Longjing to the "Chinese Home" of the Paris Olympics, introducing the West Lake Longjing tea from his hometown to guests from all over the country in fluent English. In recent years, she has also received more than 300 foreign friends from more than 10 countries to visit Longjing Tea Garden, introducing them to the history, planting, craftsmanship and other content of West Lake Longjing Tea.
