Visit a beautiful mountainside tea plantation for a unique hands-on experience. Pick and process your own tea before relaxing, admiring the stunning views and enjoying the fruits of your labour.
For a thousand years Dali served as a crossroads on the ancient Tea and Horse Trail, which was often referred to as the Southern Silk Trail. The local Bai people acted as middlemen between the Tibetan horse traders, and the tea-growers from the Xishuangbanna region of Southern Yunnan.
A visit to a local tea plantation is a wonderful way to spend the day, for an experience steeped in rich cultural history. This hands-on experience will teach you not only how to pick the leaves, but also which leaves are ripe for picking. The experience doesn’t end there, as you will then learn how to process the tea yourself, by cooking it in a large hot pan before squeezing it into small shriveled pieces with your hands. Then it all gets cooked again to remove excess moisture from the leaves.
You will also learn the differences between the types of tea, and understand that Green, Black and Pu’Er tea are made from the same kind of leaves, it is just the processing that is different.
And finally you get relax and enjoy the tea that you’ve taken from plant to pot.
You can reach the plantation by car, or be adventurous and travel on horseback from Dali Old Town.
Hi,
Do you have some specific address to recommande for the tea picking?
Thank you,
Hi Sarah,
The tea plantation in the picture is located above 银桥村 (Silver Bridge Village, about 5km North of Dali Old Town). Most tour agencies in the old town would offer a tea plantation tour. They can also be organised from the Jade Emu International Guesthouse.