The West Lake Longjing Tea Frying Competition will be held.

West Lake Longjing Tea has a long-standing history and is renowned worldwide for its exceptional qualities: vibrant green color, rich aroma, sweet flavor, and beautiful shape, earning it the title of the “Queen of Green Tea”. In 2022, the craft of making West Lake Longjing Tea, as a crucial component of “Traditional Chinese Tea Making Techniques and Related Customs”, was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

West Lake Longjing Tea thrives in the mountains that encircle it on three sides, where peaks upon peaks offer lush greenery, situated by the water. The tea gardens seamlessly blend with the surrounding forests, with the superior natural environment contributing to the exceptional quality of the tea. Through long-term production practices, West Lake Longjing Tea has developed a set of distinctive techniques during the frying process, characterized by ten specific hand movements: grabbing, shaking, piling, spreading, reverse spreading, pushing, buckling, tossing, grinding, and pressing

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/moolZjcZ1Tw?si=hrta_y86CEH6mnlf

The West Lake District, as the primary production area for West Lake Longjing Tea, has undertaken extensive efforts to enhance the skill level of hand-frying techniques. Annually, it hosts the West Lake Longjing Tea Frying Competition, organizes intensive training sessions for young tea fryers, and vigorously cultivates the next generation of tea professionals. This initiative aims to preserve traditional hand-frying crafts, promote the modernization of West Lake Longjing Tea, improve its quality, and continuously polish the “golden business card” of West Lake Longjing Tea.

This year, the West Lake Longjing Tea Frying Competition will be held on March 29th at Jiu Street in Longwu Tea Town, West Lake District. Fifty-eight outstanding contestants selected from the West Lake production area will compete on site to win the titles of “Tea Frying Champion” and “Newcomer Champion”. It’s particularly noteworthy that this competition has the highest proportion of young participants in its history. An increasing number of young people are genuinely experiencing the charm of the traditional hand-frying craft of West Lake Longjing Tea. The involvement of young talent infuses new vitality into the heritage and development of West Lake Longjing Tea, presenting a thriving and vibrant new phase.