Despite the dustbowl that Hangzhou became on Sunday – something to do with the Gobi desert migrating to Japan – we decided to go for a wander and see of they had started picking the new tea yet. After all, what’s a bit of dust and pollution compared with a seriously respectable smoking habit. So off we went. It was fairly early in the afternoon and had a little trouble catching a taxi but then scooted, surprisingly quickly, thanks to the new tunnel under Lingyin Road, down to Nine Creeks Village (九溪村 | jiuxi cun) on Qiantang River. We had planned to take the taxi up into that first tea-drunk village as the walk is boring, but the road was chokka with cars the whole way. I couldn’t figure out if they were trying to park, or drive, or just organise an impromptu air horn requiem to google.cn. Whatever it was, it was time to walk, because the cars wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.
At that village, turn left up the Nine Creeks trail. I had on my trusty walking books, but felt a little like one of the Chelsea Tractor drivers you see in London – pristine polished Range Rovers quite unnecessary for dealing with the odd pavement hop – the highlight my boots got was kicking a few annoying children out the way, and the odd stepping stones over the streams. I guess there are 9 streams? Up into Longjing Village  (龙井村), where we looked for some late lunch, but all of those people have quite rightly given up cooking. Why cook when you can live like a king selling expensive tea? Through Longjing and on up Manjuelong Road (满觉陇路) and into the higher part of Yangmeiling Village (杨梅岭村). At no point did we see any teapickers, nor any of the happy-faced old men crushing the tea into their electric woks. (Happiness having something to do with the title of this post).
The view from the top of Yangmeiling Village is good. We couldn’t really see much because of the dust storm, but  trust me, it is pretty good. We settled into a restaurant overlooking the whole thing and ordered food. Of course we had the requisite boiled ‘local’ chicken, (农家本鸡煲 | nongjia benji bao) ‘local’ being a euphemism for tough. The poor thing had spent its short life running away from dogs and cars, little did it know that the real enemy was the hand that feeds it. However, like all these long-distance sprint chickens, it does really taste better.
And a cup of New Tea. To be fair, the 30Y for a cup is not expensive in the whole scheme of tea, but my glass had 33 leaves in it – I counted – so about 1Y per leaf. The price for a pound / jin? 2,500 – 3,000Y. Gulp. How many leaves in a pound? Our joyful restauranteur told us his was a little cheaper, “You know, nege de, but if you go into Longjing Village, maybe 3,000-5000Y”. There has got to be 5,000 leaves in a pound…
We had a choice after lunch. Take the Y3 bus down the hill into Beishan Road and walk to Maya, or walk back to the river. We took the bus, but if you’re interested, you can ask around the village for somebody to take you into a town by car – no meter, so haggle. As for the walk, done that before. From the top of Yangmeiling Village, head straight down into the village proper and keep going. Generally fewer people than the Nine Creeks route and about half way is a temple – Li’An – which can be shockingly quiet considering the land we live in.