Longjingcun
Terraced hillside village where farmers still hand-press fresh leaves into hot woks to make prized green tea.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Longjingcun, the tea village above Hangzhou's West Lake, opens with the emperor Qianlong tasting the local brew on a visit south and setting eighteen bushes aside for the palace alone. It follows those bushes into the present, where they still stand fenced near Hu Gong Temple, and turns to what actually separates ordinary tea from Longjing's prized flavor, a technique worked by hand in a scalding wok. A tea master presses each handful flat against the hot metal using roughly ten distinct hand motions, and getting even one wrong ruins the batch.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Meijiawucun
Working tea village of terraced hillside gardens, roadside teahouses and farmers roasting the season's Longjing harvest by hand.
中国茶叶博物馆
Tea-culture campus of exhibition halls and tea-baking workshops set amid working plantations, with no walls separating museum from field.
Wuyun Mountain
Terraced tea slopes on a cloud-crowned West Lake peak, with a thousand-year temple ruin and ancient ginkgo at its summit.
Manjuelongcun
Terraced hillside village where every autumn's osmanthus harvest is candied, brewed and baked for sale.
Nine Creeks in Misty Forest
Braided mountain streams crossed on stepping stones through tea-covered hills once fenced off from the public.
Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Museum
Cluster of craft galleries where a scissors trademark war and imperial tribute shaped a three-century brand.