Tea Picking

　　Tea picking means picking the new tea shoots.  Now, there are two methods to harvest tea such as hand plucking and machine plucking.  Superior grade tea leaves are mainly harvested by hand.  Tea farmers will use their index fingers and thumbs to clamp the stem and break the leaves off.  Sometimes, an attached blade to the index finger makes it easier to cut off the stem.  Different parts of tea leaves farmers pluck will give teas different flavors.  Therefore, tea leaves can be divided into three categories: one-tip one-leaf, one-tip two-leaves, and one-tip three-leaves, which are all young tender tea shoots and leaves.  Whether tea leaves are intact or not will decide the quality of tea making. That is, it is necessary to avoid damaging tea leaves when processing teas, or it will reduce the quality of tea leaves. 

Picking tea	Man-made picking	Collecting tea

• Photo credit：Tea Journey in Taipei Wenshan

• Reference：Tea Journey in Taipei Wenshan

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