Joy, the owner of the guesthouse, invited me to visit a tea factory owned by her family, located a short 20-minute drive from the city. It was a lovely evening. She showed me the whole process of oolong tea making, or at least the 24 hours after harvesting the tea leaves, and we picked wild strawberries.

Step 1: sun drying

After the harvest the leaves are spread out so dew or other moist can evaporate. In the sun at midday this proces takes about 10 minutes, in the evening a bit longer. Good quality oolong cannot be harvested by machine. During harvest the first three leaves are picked, excluding the bud.

Step 2: oxidizing the tea leaves

Oolong is semi-oxidised tea, therefor the leaves are oxidised by putting them in a big rotating metal drum. Hot air is blown into the drum. Now and then the drums are opened and the leaves are tossed around by hand. This proces takes many hours until the desired oxidation level is reached. I was also allowed to put my arm in and toss the leaves. The leaves smelled floral, like breathing in hot air saturated with moist and freshly cut grass.

Step 3: fixing the tea leaves

The machine below exposes the tea leaves to high heat which stops the oxidation proces. This fixes the tea leaves. It basically deactivates the enzymes in the leaves preventing further oxidation.

Step 4: rolling the leaves

When the leaves are fixed they are rolled. For the best quality batches this is done by hand, but normally the rolling is done by the machine below. Wuyi oolong is rolled for a shorter time than Anxi oolong, which is rolled until the tea leaves resemble small balls.

Step 5: further drying and removing stalks and impurities

The belt dryer further removes moist and impurities like stalks can be sorted out. After that the leaves are tossed in big bamboo baskets for removing stalks and further drying.

Step 6: roasting the tea

This proces takes place within 24 hours after the harvest. For Wuyi oolong this is only the beginning of the process. A tea master will roast the oolong over smokeless bamboo charcoal and repeat that process several times depending on the desired taste profile. It can take half a year before the tea can be sold, sometimes a year or even more.

The room below stored old bamboo drums for oxidising the leaves - they have been replaced by metal drums - and flat bamboo baskets for sun drying and hand shaking the leaves. Hand shaking nowadays is only done for very small batches of high quality leaves. This part of the tea processing is really men’s work. Joy couldn’t contain her laughter while demonstrating handling the baskets. The baskets were indeed quite big for her.

Tea room

The tea room at the tea factory was peaceful. The room was dedicated to tea drinking and the window looked out over the tea fields. I live in a two room apartment in the city center of Amsterdam but have been dreaming about a room like this for more than a decade. A room without distractions. I shouldn’t complain though, I have a roof over my head.

I’m I stayed at the factory until nightfall, so the family invited me to eat. This was not your average Chinese restaurant food. Sixteen dishes were prepared, many made from vegetables but there was also fried pork, a fish stew, and fried peanuts. Most dishes were spiced with hot chillis and the flavours were much stronger than I ever tasted. I thought it was brilliant.