Welcome to springtime in Hangzhou, a medium-sized city of eight million people in Zhejiang Province, and home the Lamborghini of China's green tea market: Longjing, known in English as Dragon Well. I'm here to watch the spring rush in action: over a few short weeks in March and April, planters will race against the sunrise (pick) the early spring harvest, earning them sizable amount of their annual income.
High-end Dragon Well, (taste) like spring's first green vegetables accented by chestnuts (roast) with sugar, can sell for 15 to over a hundred dollars an ounce. Like coffee and wine, this tea has its obsessives, the kind of people dig into details like the day when a tea was plucked and which side of a hill it came from.
So it goes in China, where tea is (day) necessity. But when outsiders try to learn all the fuss is about, they're usually confused by the (complex) of fine tea, and a marketplace filled with misinformation doesn't do much to help. That's why I've made the journey to Hangzhou myself to learn how and why this little leaf from a plain-looking bush (drive) a whole economy wild.
