Two hands toss tea leaves in a large steaming iron wok, a bamboo tray is spread with fresh leaves, a bowl of pale green tea and a dish of finished leaves stand beside it, and tea terraces rise in the distance.
Fixed, rolled and dried
Introduction
Tea whose leaf is fixed, rolled and dried: pan-dried, oven-dried, sun-dried and steamed.
Green tea is tea made from fresh leaf that is fixed, rolled and dried. By the way the leaf is fixed and dried, green tea is divided into pan-dried, oven-dried, sun-dried and steamed: pan-dried tea is dried by frying, oven-dried tea by baking, sun-dried tea in the sun, and steamed tea is fixed with steam. The cake tea of Lu Yu's Cha Jing in the Tang was made from steamed leaf, and its chapter on making tea lists the steps of steaming, pounding, patting, baking, stringing and sealing. Scented and other reprocessed teas belong to Reprocessed Tea, and white, yellow, oolong, black and dark teas each have classes of their own.