"In China, when you see someone on the street, before you even say 'hello,' you say 'have you had tea yet?'" Home of tea, China, is not only the main producer and world leader in sales, it is also the main consumer of tea: about 80% of all cultivated and gathered tea are aimed for home consumption and only 20% are for export. Tea is cultivated in China on the vast territories in the eastern regions, adjoint to the sea, and in the western regions close to the border with Tibet. China boasts its old traditions of tea cultivating and producing. For ages Chinese picked seeds of tea trees in October, couched them during the winter and with spring rains planted seeds in rows, alternating them with corn or millet rows. The latter helped to save tea leaves from straight sun rays. Tea producing in China bases mostly on hand work. For a long time teat trees were planted nearly on every free plot, close to the villages and cities, even on the steep mountainsides. There is even a legend about Monkey Tea: in some regions tea trees were growing in so much inaccessible places that people had to train monkeys to gather tea leaves. Comments - 0