I grew up in a tea farm about 20 miles from Taimu Mountain in eastern Fujian province of China. Fujian is one of the major tea growing regions in China. The famous Oolong tea Iron Goddess (aka Tie Kuan Yin) is from southern Fujian. Taimu Mountain is the origin of the exotic White tea.
I spent most of my early childhood in a tea farm with my parents and three brothers and a sister along many other families and their playful kids.
The farm is very large with two separate locations on two different mountains several miles apart. Aside tea growing and processing, the farm also grew crops and raised boars. The farm was state owned. The majority of the workers were young single man and women. Some of them just graduated from high schools. This is during the time of Cultural Revolution when every graduate was sent to a remote farm to learn from the physical work. For most kids, there was no chance to go to college at that time. We all lived in the same apartment building and shared a big dinning hall. It was like a big family.
As a kid, I went to the tea garden with my mother and other women to pluck the tea leaves during the day. My father who was the accountant...