James:  We're now joined by our reporter Wang Mangmang to talk more about tea. Mangmang yesterday hearing this programme had a story on Longjin today about  delay in the spring sales.What is the fascination that China and Chinese have with tea?

WMM:  Oh James,  we all know the practice of drinking tea has a long history in China. The popular legend says tea was discovered by Emperor Shennong in ancient China about 5000 years ago. At first, tea was used as a ritual offering and then tea leaves were eaten as a vegetable, or even used as medicine and until the Han Dynasty more than two thousand years ago, tea was new drinking. Some classify tea into four categories, white, green, oolong and black, while others also add scented and compressed teas. Among all those, green tea is the most popular. and you know tea is produced in vast areas in China, from Hainan Island down in the extreme south to Shandong Province,and from Tibet in the southwest to Taiwan across the Straits.

James: I want to ask you about this among all the difference the varieties of teas, why do people pay particular attention to when the spring tea goes on the  market?

WMM: In the southern parts of the country, tea harvested before Qingming that's on April 5th on the lunar calendar tea harvest before that time is called spring tea. It's the first tea leaving factories throughout the year, and it has the best quality. The plant can be easily affected by bad weather, such as low temperature and lack of rainfall. Take last year for example, nearly half of the tea-producing areas were hit by sudden snow and drought in the previous winter. So The picking time was postponed, and output fell about 20 percent. and this year were expected to see a similar situation. And I think  we still have to wait till the end of this month to have a good cup of tea.James..

James: Oh, we look forward to that cup of tea.Thank you very much Wang Mangmang join us here.In our studio in Beijing...

声明：音视频均来自互联网链接，仅供学习使用。本网站自身不存储、控制、修改被链接的内容。"沪江英语"高度重视知识产权保护。当如发现本网站发布的信息包含有侵犯其著作权的链接内容时，请联系我们，我们将依法采取措施移除相关内容或屏蔽相关链接。