The provided diagram depicts the intricate manufacture of processing tea leaves into five distinct types of tea.
Overall, it is evident that while all five forms of tea commence with plucking and conclude with an oven-drying stage, they diverge significantly at various subsequent processing points.
To begin with, tea leaves reach maturity and are methodically harvested by farmers. Following this, the leaves undergo a wilting phase through both natural and mechanical means. For the production of white tea, after wilting, the leaves are directly transitioned into the drying process. In contrast, the process for green tea involves steaming and rolling before the final drying stage. Similarly, oolong tea is rolled after wilting, but unlike green tea, it undergoes a slight fermentation prior to drying.
Conversely, the processes for producing large leaf black tea and small leaf black tea are more complex, entailing several additional steps. After the wilting phase, large leaf black tea is rolled and fully fermented before being dried. On the other hand, the process for small leaf black tea follows a slightly different procedure, where the leaves are crushed instead of rolled before undergoing full fermentation, resulting in smaller leaf sizes.