THE TEA GARDENS OF CHINA
At the bottom of the teapot you will find some leaves. Spread one of them out carefully. You can see that it was once long and slender, a little like willow leaves. It may have grown in some garden in far-away China, for we get a great deal of tea from that country.
I have told you how close together the people live on the fertile plains of eastern China. There is so little room that many live on boats on the rivers and in the harbors. On this account their farms are not so large as ours.
The tea trees in the gardens are about five or six feet high. If they were allowed to, they would reach a height of twenty-five feet; but they are kept trimmed for the same reasons that the coffee trees are pruned.
The trees are raised from seeds, and are generally planted on land which slopes toward the south. What advantage is this?
In about three years after planting, the first crop of leaves can be gathered. In China they are usually gathered four times each year, and the trees continue to yield for twenty-five or thirty years.
When the leaves are picked, they are full of sap or juice, and so have to be dried. The drying is usually done on trays made of bamboo. While they are drying, they are rubbed and rolled between the palms of the hands, so that they may dry more quickly and evenly.
Next the leaves are placed, a few at a time, in iron pans over a charcoal fire. They are left in these but a short time, for they are hot. This process is called "firing." Sometimes the leaves are "fired" but once, and sometimes twice.
The tea is then spread out, and broken bits of stems are removed. Some of the tea growers place the tea in baskets which are suspended over slow fires, for drying.
If you were to look into some of the tea-hongs or houses where tea is cured and packed, you would find the tea dried in a very curious fashion.