Tourists find tea and more in Anhui

The name is fitting, as the county's mountains are full of orchids. Tea connoisseurs can taste the delicate presence of orchid in the beverage.

Visitors to Tingxi arrive on a winding road bounded by rustling bamboo and a kind of tree crucial for the making of Xuan paper, the best-known handmade paper in China, which originated in Jingxian.

Some of the residents of Tingxi spend every day away on the mountainside, picking tea leaves, while others are busy running more than 170 homestays and restaurants in their own villages, often located beside streams.

Hand-on experience

The abundance of tea not only allows visitors to buy the freshest leaves at attractive prices but also provides opportunities to learn the whole process of tea production, from picking to drying.

Though few, some households allow tourists to experience the whole process themselves.

Other villagers don't offer a handson experience, mainly because the harvest season is so short－only a month－so they have little time and no facilities for visitors. One skilled picker can gather about 2 kilograms of fresh tea leaves in a day's work, and that will yield a mere 500 grams of dried final product. No wonder tea prices continue to climb. For the current harvest, each picker will be paid at least 150 yuan ($21) per day. Most come from other areas for the temporary work.