Makes Best Cup Of Tea In China

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30954, 10 January 1966, Page 2

Makes Best Cup Of Tea In China

[By

IAN McCRONE]

HANG CHOW. Twenty-year-old Miss Wang Hsin-Chuan claims to pour the best cup of tea in the world. She bases her boast not on her ability as a brewer of tea, but on the water and the tea leaves which she uses.

Miss Wang works in the teahouse attached to the Hu Pao Chuan (Tiger Spring) just outside Hangchow, one of the most beautiful resorts in China.

The mineral waters of the spring, first discovered and developed under the Tang Dynasty more than 1000 years ago, are excellent for teamaking. The Hangchow district also produces the famous “lung chiing” (dragon well) green tea. In terms of Western taste, this is not everyone’s cup of tea. It is drunk without milk or sugar, and has more fragrance than body. Miss Wang pours it into big china mugs from a brass kettle with a long spout.

Regarded as a luxury, this tea costs 15 cents —twice the price of a whole meal in a rural commune mess hail. Makings Ready

But for visitors, it Is offered morning, noon and night, at conferences, on trains and in hotel bedrooms, where the makings are always on a tray with a vacuum flask of hot water.

Bought outside, the best “lung ching” costs more than £1 per lb weight, even in the “friendship” stores where foreigners get big discounts on Chinese goods. Tea plantations In the Hangchow area are now part of the West Lake People’s Commune, a mixture of production brigades which specialise respectively in tea. cultivating, vegetable growing and animal-rearing.

In a sheltered valley near the Chekiang river, 33-year-old Mr Lou Tsun-how, heads the Mai Chou-hou tea production brigade of the commune which numbers 240 households, comprising 1200 people. His headqarters is an orn-ately-carved wooden house, which once belonged to a landlord. Mr Lou’s command is a relatively small production area, but he points out that in the last 10 years the ground carrying tea bushes on the terraced hillsides has been doubled, and output increased from 661 b to 2911 b per mou (one sixth of an acre). Mr Lou, who was born in the valley was left an orphan at 14, says that household inicome soared since the landlord days. Before 1949 it was 150 yuan a year for a family. Today, it is an average of 965 yuan for a household (21 workers) and ranges from a low figure of 300 yuan for an old widow living on her own, to 3000 yuan for an 11-member ! family, five of whom work. The peasants have to bhy jeome works out at £l2 a I month, is supplemented by the raising of pigs, poultry ■ and vegetables on private plots. Small Plots Each working member of the commune gets a small plot of land on which to grow ; what he likes in his spare time. He can sell the produce; for cash, or eat it.

The peasants have to buy their rice at controlled prices through a commune shop. A heavy worker needs up to 401 b of rice a month. A lighter eater may manage on only 241 b, but, at 11 cents per lb, the monthly rice bill may be the equivalent of 9s to 14s sterling for each adult. Giris plucking the tender tea leaves on the stone-ter-raced hillsides use two hands now says the guide. “Before liberation,” he adds, “they used only one.”

Primitive Methods

In the rather primitive sorting and fixation (drying) shed, old women stoke the fires with dry leaves and twigs. An electric drying system is being tried out, but it is the

only piece of mechanisation about the place. Mr Lou admits that the brigade has not a single motor vehicle, neither car, lorry, nor cultivator. Other | j

things, he explains, like the newly-completed drying and storage shed, and the building of village schools have had to come first. Mr Lou attributes the Increase in production in recent years to the use of more fertiliser, more attention to tilling the soil, insecticides and seed selection.

Only 20 per cent of the fertiliser now used is chemical, but the ground is treated four times more frequently than it was before the production brigade took over the plantation.—N.Z.-P.A.-Renter.