On a misty hillside high above a stretch of the mainland's southeast coast, migrant worker Tao Mingxiu steps nimbly between tea bushes on a steep terrace, shifts the weight of the seven-month-old son she is carrying on a sling on her back and stares in disbelief.
'How much did you say?' the 25-year-old from Guizhou province asks with an expression wavering between incredulous and amused. 'That can't be right. I can't believe anyone could afford to pay 300 yuan for a cup of tea.'
Tao earns 20 yuan a day tending bushes and picking tea from the hillsides of Fuding. The idea that thousands of kilometres away, in genteel tea shops in Europe, people spend as much as she earns in a fortnight on a single pot of tea is almost impossible for her to grasp.
But this is no ordinary tea. This is silver needle white, the world's most expensive tea and a drink that has suddenly captured the imagination of health-conscious westerners, who are being told by marketers that it can slow the ageing process and prevent cancer. The result of the hype is that a tea revered in China for more than 1,000 years but virtually unknown outside the mainland three years ago has suddenly become the drink of choice for those wealthy enough to afford it.
At the Plaisir du Chocolat teashop in Edinburgh, Scotland, a pot of silver needle tea for one costs GBP20 (HK$300). The assistant manager there claims it is 'a high quality tea and probably the most expensive in the world'.
At Claridge's in London, where a spokesman describes silver needle as an 'absolutely fabulous and gorgeous tea', the price is the equivalent of HK$250. Even in Hong Kong, an hour's flight from Fujian province, where it is grown, a single serving at The Peninsula hotel costs HK$50. It has caused such a