The diagram demonstrates how the tea leaves of five different types of tea are processed.
Overall, all the five types of tea leaves have to undergo four main steps, including growing, plucking, wilting and oven drying. Except for white tea, the others have from one or three more extra steps such as steaming, rolling or crushing and fermentating.
Initially, after growing until a certain level, tea leaves are harvested by plucking then dried until wilting. After that, each type of tea leaves undergo different treatments. While the olong tea and large leaf black tea leaves are rolled before being slightly and fully fermentated, the leaves of the small leaf black tea experienced a crushing process before moving to the full fermentation. Ultimately, all tea leaves are dried in an oven before turning into final products.
In the case of white tea and green tea, the processes are more straightforward. The white tea leaves only have to undergo four main steps of the process. Meanwhile, the green tea leaves are processed through two more extra steps, being steamed and rolled before drying.