Heritage Tour
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Sunday, July 12, 2015 HERITAGE TOUR BANQUET The trip is winding down. Today is the last day we are together as a group of 18 families. Many people are flying home tomorrow. We are staying on a few extra days to go on to Chengdu in the Sichuan Provence to see pandas! In the early afternoon we visited the Guilin Tea Research Institute. The Institute was founded in 1965, the area of the whole plantation contains about 42 hectares, and it owns 250 different tea plants. It was the royal tea garden in Ming Dynasty 400 years ago. We learned how tea was processed as well as which parts of the tea plant produced the different varieties of tea. As you can see here, the Tea picking staff look a bit strange compared to the local people in Guilin. The first day of our trip as a group, the girls picked fabrics and were measured for silk dresses. The dresses were delivered and the girls wore them at the banquet held for the last day we would all be together as one group. They looked beautiful and it was insightful to see the patterns and styles each girls chose for themselves. Here are a few shots of the girls in their custom made dresses: We loved the time we spent with all these families. Each of the girls (most of whom are teenagers) is lovely.