Tea

This past weekend, we spent time in the Longjing district of Hangzhou where they grow a lot of their tea.

We went with the intention of frolicking through some tea fields, picking some tea leaves, learning about the tea roasting process and then heading home with one or two tea cakes each. However, that is not even close to what actually happened (which is why the jean shorts and little sneakers I had chosen to wear that day are currently the biggest regrets of my 22 years on this earth.)

Our journey started on a "bamboo lined path" where we frolicked past forests of bamboo, little ponds and adorable little families taking pictures with the bamboo and the ponds. From there, we saw a tomb of a well-respected monk and a lot more bamboo. Then, we turned. We turned and we bumped into a big stone doorway and a staircase. A big staircase. A staircase that, when you're standing at the bottom, you can only assume goes directly to the heavens because, no matter how high you look, that staircase is all that you can see. So, instead of the frolicking we had been hoping for, we climbed.

And climbed.

And climbed.

After what seemed like the longest hour and a half of my life, we finally reached the top - or what we thought was the top - but we still hadn't seen any tea. There was a path going down the mountain and we were told that if we followed this path down the mountain, we would find the tea. So, that's what we did.

We went down.

Down, down, down.

And then suddenly, we started going back up.

Up, up, up.

And then we found it.

The jackpot of tea fields.

They were everywhere. And they were beautiful.

But we were so tired ( and also melting because it was like 88 degrees ). And the stairs and the mountains just kept going.

Finally, we bumped into a group of guys who said that they had just come from the little town in the middle of the fields and that if we followed the path down through the tea we would find the town and the bus that would take us back to Hangzhou center.

So we went down the path.

Down, down, down.

Finally, we made it to the little town where we, and everyone else who had visited the tea fields that day, were waiting for the bus to get back.

Each bus that came was jammed with people and the people at the bus station were crawling over each other to get on.

So we decided to take a taxi.

But then our taxi broke down.

So, we walked.

And as we walked, we passed even more tea fields and the tea house that we had been trying to get to when we walked up the mountain and then, we realized, that the tea fields we had been hoping to frolic amongst had been just down the street from where we started all along....

In the end, it was quite the day. It actually kind of worked out because we had to choose between the tea plantations or another big hike like the one we did at Huang Shan in January but this way we got in both. Unfortunately, we were neither expecting nor prepared for the hike that we at the tea fields but it was still very beautiful!

And now, I can definitely check being a tea farmer off of the list of possible careers.