If you have done your homework on tea, you will know it is an evergreen, so "tea season" is indeed a bit of a misnomer. However, tea bushes certainly do have spurts in growth and produce more in certain seasons. So, without tearing my own title apart too much, I will state again, the big harvest season for green tea has begun.
The local markets here are bustling with individual tea farmers selling their tea, representatives from village-level tea factories, and, of course, the buyers, who have come in from the big tea companies, mostly in the Eastern China coastal region.
Also, the subsidiary industries are active. Two or three local tea equipment repair shops have stronger business than usual. One of my friends was in town just last weekend for repairs on one of his pieces of machinery.
Not just the fix-it folks, though, there are also sellers of tea production equipment. Indeed, they knew the season was coming up, and three or four months ago started putting up their poster advertisements in villages for all the equipment which is available for sale. You have to be ready for that tea crop!
I would have thought the buying price here in town for tea would stay fairly constant, but it seems to fluctuate, from what locals say. So, those who sell in greater quantities bring their tea in daily, but if the price is too low, they just store it in a warehouse in town. Once the price is back up, they bring out the stores and sell, sell, sell. Actually, if the bigger sellers do not sell at the low prices anyway, I would think the buyers have all the more reason to balance out some of the shift in their buying price. That is just my opinion.
Soon, loads of green tea will be flowing across China to help cheaply stuff the packages of "genuine" tea from the well-known tea growing areas. They need to sell some cheap tea too, and the best way to do that is just use some cheaper tea to "water down" the quality and cost.
This sounds to me very similar to what is happening with Vietnamese coffee right now. It is now the world's second largest producer of coffee from what I have heard, but much of that is to Brazil, the world's number one producer. Sounds like some of that "genuine" Brazilian coffee on the shelves in the stores is actually grown in the highlands of Vietnam.
Of course, these are corporate secrets and I cannot prove any of this. I have a feeling my guesses are pretty close to the mark, though.
