Time for tea

By Katy

So one of the things that Hangzhou is famous for is their tea. As we’re not allowed to leave the city right now we are getting the chance to do some of the things that we hadn’t got around to before. This Sunday’s trip was to the tea plantations. After getting dropped off in slightly the wrong place we managed to get to where we needed to be. Unfortunately getting into the main village required us to both show our healthcode and give our passport number. We would be fine with this if it was also required by Chinese people but currently there are a small minority of places treating foreigners differently. This is particularly frustrating as there is absolutely no logic to it at this point. Even under the assumption that a foreigner had somehow managed to avoid quarantine (very unlikely given the consequences of getting caught doing so) it is now impossible for a foreigner to have been here for less than 14 days due to the flight ban. Fortunately most places do not do this and we have never experienced any ‘personal’ racism.

Anyway, we got past this and were rewarded with the incredibly beautiful tea terraces. It really is amazing to have such beautiful countryside so close when you live in a city. We knew we were going the right way as we saw many tea pickers wandering the same way! You can actually go and pick tea but we decided to just have a little walk and then go to a teahouse. We had what passes for Chinese afternoon tea and an incredibly expensive cup of green tea. The food was good but unfortunately the tea was somewhat disappointing. We practised our Chinese which is getting increasingly better now that we are trying to practise every day! Perhaps I’ll write a post about learning Chinese at some point…

The other striking thing about being out was the very relaxed attitude to wearing masks. Many people are not even wearing them at all now. Our complex is also starting to relax their protocols and have even opened the main gate again. All of this is in stark contrast to school where we will be required to wear a mask at all times. Nevertheless, it seems a very positive sign that the risk of contracting the virus is now very low.