When Exactly Is Tea Season?

The short answer: late March through early May.

The longer answer — and this matters if you're booking flights — is that "spring" in Hangzhou plays out in three distinct acts:

Act 1: Early Spring (March 10–25)

The weather is unpredictable. It might be 18°C and sunny. It might be 6°C with drizzle for four days straight. Cherry blossoms start appearing around March 15-20 at Taiziwan Park (太子湾公园) — currently the best blossom viewing spot in the city, though you'll share it with approximately half of Hangzhou's 12 million residents on weekends.

The tea terraces are still mostly dormant. This is the quietest part of spring — fewer tourists, lower hotel prices, and a city that feels like it's holding its breath.

What's good now: Cherry blossoms, uncrowded temples, lower prices. What you'll miss: Tea picking, full greenery.

Act 2: Peak Tea Season (March 25 – April 15)

This is the window. The pre-Qingming (明前, Ming Qian) tea harvest happens during these three weeks, and the entire tea-growing region hums with activity. Longjing Village, Meijiawu (梅家坞), and the surrounding hillsides are at their most beautiful — every terrace is a different shade of green, from the pale yellow-green of new buds to the deep emerald of mature leaves.

Exclusive detail: I was guiding a British couple through Longjing Village on April 3rd last year. We stopped to watch a picker — a woman in her 60s who'd been doing this since she was 14 — and she motioned us closer. She showed us the difference between a one-bud-one-leaf pick (top grade) and a one-bud-two-leaf pick (still excellent, slightly less expensive). Then she took my guest's hand and guided her fingers to the right spot on the stem. "Like this," she said in her local dialect. "Twist, don't pull." My guest picked exactly three leaves and talked about it for the rest of her trip.

That's the thing about tea season — the people making the tea are still here, still working the same terraces their grandparents worked. It's not a show. It's their life. And they're surprisingly willing to share it if you show genuine curiosity.

Weather during peak season: 14-22°C. Rain is common. Bring a light jacket. The famous "spring rain on West Lake" (西湖烟雨) is misty and atmospheric — you'll understand why Chinese poets wrote 4,000 years of verse about it.

Act 3: Late Spring (April 16 – May 31)

Post-harvest calm. The tea bushes are resting, the tourist crowds thin slightly, and temperatures climb to a comfortable 20-28°C. The lotus leaves start unfurling on West Lake in May — by late May they're the size of dinner plates, a preview of the summer lotus explosion to come.

This is my personal favorite window. You miss the tea harvest but you get everything else: full greenery, warm days, fewer crowds than April, and prices that haven't hit summer peak yet.

Beyond the Tea: Everything Else in Spring

Cherry Blossoms at Taiziwan Park (太子湾公园)

Free entry. Go on a weekday morning (before 9 AM if you want photos without 300 people in them). The park has several varieties of cherry trees with staggered bloom times, so the window is wider than places with a single variety — roughly March 15 to April 5.

The park also has tulip beds that peak around late March. A Dutch guest once told me it reminded her of Keukenhof, "but with pagodas in the background." I'll take that.

Su Causeway in the Morning Mist

The Su Causeway (苏堤) crosses West Lake north to south — 2.8 km with six stone bridges. In spring, willow branches trail into the water on both sides and peach blossoms alternate with the willows. The classic Hangzhou phrase is 桃红柳绿 (táo hóng liǔ lǜ) — "peach red, willow green" — and March on the Su Causeway is exactly that.

Walk it at 7:00 AM on a weekday. You'll share it with elderly locals doing tai chi and maybe two other photographers. By 10:00 AM the causeway is a river of selfie sticks.

Lingyin Temple in the Mist

Spring rain at Lingyin is a feature, not a bug. The temple complex has 1,700 years of history carved into its rock faces — hundreds of Buddhist figures weathered by centuries of Hangzhou rain. In spring mist, with incense smoke mixing into the drizzle, the Feilai Peak grottoes feel genuinely ancient in a way they don't under bright summer sun.

A Sample Spring Day (What I'd Do)

If I were planning a spring day for a guest who wants to experience tea season fully:

8:00 AM — Su Causeway walk. Coffee from a stall near the north end (there's a Luckin Coffee 5 minutes away — not romantic but functional).

9:30 AM — DiDi to Longjing Village. Walk the terraces, watch the pickers, breathe air that smells like fresh tea leaves (it's not a metaphor — the entire valley smells faintly vegetal during harvest).

11:00 AM — Tea tasting at a village teahouse. A proper tasting involves three infusions from the same leaves. The first is perfume, the second is flavor, the third is memory. My Longjing tea buying guide explains how to taste without getting pressured to buy.

12:30 PM — Lunch at a village restaurant. Spring bamboo shoots (春笋, chun sun) are in season — sliced thin and stir-fried with nothing but oil and salt. It's the most minimalist dish in Hangzhou cuisine and one of the best things you'll eat all year.

2:00 PM — Meijiawu (梅家坞) tea village. Less famous than Longjing Village, fewer tour buses, same quality tea. Walk the tea terraces above the village — the view across the valley at 3 PM golden hour is worth the 20-minute climb.

4:30 PM — Back to the lake. Find a bench near the broken bridge (断桥) and watch the sun go down behind Baoshi Hill. If it's been raining, the sunset hits the mist and turns the sky five shades of orange-pink.

Practical Spring Travel Tips