If you live in Hangzhou and register with the government, you are given part of a hectare of land to use. Most people grow tea on their land. When it comes time for harvesting, some people pick their own tea, others hire workers to pick it. We’ve seen Long Jing tea picked early in the day -as early as 4:30 am when the sky is still a deep gray and there is plenty of dew on the leaves. Generally, the tea is picked starting at 6:30 or 7:30 am and through out the day, with a break for lunch. At the end of the day pickers do one of three things. Either they take their tea home to process themselves, or they take it to a covered tea market where they sell their freshly picked leaves to be mixed with other leaves and all together it’s sold as that day’s harvest. Or, they wait until the end of the day and line up to give everything from that particular picking area to the person who owns it, and they are paid for their day’s work. 
Some tea pickers are migrant workers, starting North, and making their way South during the harvest season. Being a migrant worker in China is common place and while probably not an ideal lifestyle for long, it’s not looked down upon. In fact, it’s a necessity considering the amount of hand picked tea required to make a kilo of dry tea. A migrant worker can earn 40 yuan per day (if you accept accommodation and food from your host) or – 80 yuan per day (if you do not). That’s a good wage when you can get a bowl of noodles for 4 yuan. Unlike in Taiwan, the ladies, and they are all women, are not brought breakfast, tea and lunch. It’s also important to note only women pick tea, men do not. Men process tea. We’ll learn Dragonwell tea processing from Master Yip in a minute. (Yip means Leaf in Chinese, and it’s cute to think his name is Master Leaf because he’s a master tea leaf processor!)