Travel Blog - 1 DAY - HANGZHOU Tea Garden Hiking

OKDeal Travel
Oct 12, 2023
2 min read

Updated: Jul 24, 2024

If you’re trying to escape from the busy Shanghai, Hangzhou and its surroundings are the perfect place! This time we were going to spend the day in Hangzhou, hiking in the tea garden and picking some leaves to learn how to make tea!

Let the trip begin! :)

We started the day hiking around the tea garden, among the beautiful tea plantation, amazing colorful landscapes (didn't even believe those colors were real!), waterfalls and lot of couples in love (it was the perfect scenery for wedding pictures!).

Weather was really amazing, it felt like summer...in April!!

After the hiking it was time for tea leaves picking! I had no idea which leaves to pick...and also not sure all leaves I picked were actually tea leaves ahaha but I learned something, you're supposed to pick the fresher, smaller and lighter green leaves! Some of us were so focused on getting the best leaves that even climbed the hill!!

After gathering all the tea leaves picked by everybody, we took it to a tea house where we were told how to make tea!

You should put the leaves inside the big metal bowl that you can see in the photos, that bowl is electricaly warmed and it roasts the leaves!

The smell is amazing, and to be honest I was so hungry that it even smelled like cake in the oven! This tea making process lasts normally 7h. What we saw was just a demonstration, also because the leaves we picked were not good at all!!

It's a long time picking tea leaves tradition, we can't expect to arrive there and make the best tea in the world!!!

In the end they were kind enough to give us a little tea box as gift! :)

Most of times we just find excuses to stay at home or wasting our time with meaningless things. In the end of the day I realized that I haven't seen the sunset for months…something that I used to do in Portugal everyday, one of my favourite moments of the day. It made me realize that, specially for us foreigners, that spend our lifes jumping from city to city, country to country, in search for adventure, adrenaline, experience, we have no idea that most of the times what we’re looking for is just...ourselves.