Tea Market:
Tea sales generally start in the mountains at a drying house. The spring teas are generally weighed on a gram scale. The later larger leafs are weighted on the larger scale.
Below a collection point is setup at a small village. Everyone brings down their pickings to earn some extra cash. That I know of there are no large farms in the areas I traveled around. Tea is grown on small plots.
Various buyers throw down a plastic blanket and start buying. There will be various types and quality of teas brought to market.
The market buyers above and in the small villages. The will have their own dring houses or sell to drying houses. Below is a larer village. Here there will be mostly dried tea for sale. This town has about 40 to 60 thousand people and the market is on a street corner.
Early in the morning the riders come from the villages and sell their dried tea.
The days starts out slows but as the day goes on the pace picks up.
Eventually the dried teas are bought and brought into the larger towns and small cities. The teas are bulk sold and either repackaged into tins and small bags for resale or bulk sold to larger cities.
Buyers come from all over to sniff and taste the teas.
Tea must be cleaned of anything that would change the flavor of the tea. The quality teas are all hand picked to insure consistancy of the type of leaf.
Obviously not green tea. I think this is black tea. The were about 40 women sorting and cutting long leaves.
Packaging and branding happens generally in the larger towns and small cities. The price of tea at this point skyrockets.
