Chapter VIII · The Producing Regions: Making — In Huainan Circuit, Guangzhou is best, Yiyang and Shuzhou next…

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The passage

“In Huainan Circuit, Guangzhou is best, Yiyang and Shuzhou next, Shouzhou lower, and Qizhou and Huangzhou lowest.”

Making

Tea is made, not merely picked. The timing of the harvest and the precision of each step decide how much of the mountain survives in the cup.

Fixation, rolling, oxidation, and drying all push the leaf in different directions. A fine raw material can be lost by a careless hand.

Read the old processing sequence as a chain of decisions, not a list of museum objects.

Reading note

Read the passage once for the image, once for the judgment, and once for the practice it implies.

Practice

• Name one thing the passage asks you to notice.
• Compare it with a tea you know.
• Keep the question open.