China teas, according to the "Tea and Coffee Trade Journal," are produced chiefly from the variety of the plant known as Thea bohea.1 The leaves of this tree-shrub are of a dark green color and are from one and a half to three inches in length. This variety is a small shrub compared with the variety of the tea plant which grows in India and which is a large, strong, growing plant, which becomes almost a tree, and the leaves of which range from three to five inches in length.

1 Botanists now recognize only one true tea plant, Thea Sinensis.

Generally the tea is grown by small farmers, who cultivate only a few bushes around the house in which they live, although others have more extensive gardens, but, as a rule the tea farms are very small.

After picking, the tea is dried in the sun, rolled and again semi-dried. The tea is then sold to merchants at Tea Hong, who dry and grade it before exporting. The product made by this process is black tea.