Tea Story: Alishan Farmer Part II

In 2007, we led our first Taiwan Tea Tour and took 6 of our customers to see Alishan's Zhang family. Before the trip to Alishan, the six tour members were already quite amazed by Taiwanese food & culture. In Alishan, they were able to experience wonderful Taiwanese hospitality and delicious food in person.

Each morning, Mrs. Lin would cook us breakfast. It was so delicious that we would eat more food than we usually do in the morning. After breakfast, we would take a break and then gather in their living room for tea. On the tea table, one would see crackers, different types of dried fruit and roasted peanuts. Those roasted peanuts were SO GOOD that we couldn't stop eating them!

After many pots of tea and snacks, we got into Mr. Zhang's car to go visit his sister. The moment we settled down into her living room, her husband started to heat the tea water and she disappeared into the back and came out with a huge bowl of crackers and candies. She asked us to have some. Our tour members looked at me with their eyes wide-open, and said, "What do we do?" I taught them to politely say, "No, thank you!" We were already full from breakfast and snacks. Every 10 minutes or so, she would disappear into the back and come back out with more food! Homemade soy milk, steamed buns, pickled peaches that were picked in their backyard....

At around 11am, she asked, "Do you want some instant noodles?" I had to laugh and translated what she said. Everyone simply shook his/her head, so I told her we were not hungry at all. Then she said, "If you don't like instant noodles, we can order some lunch boxes." I translated again and we all had to laugh. One of our tour members asked, " Do you Taiwanese people eat like this all of the time? How is everyone still skinny?" I said, "We do eat a lot of food, but not like this. This is one of the ways that a Taiwanese person shows his or her affection and hospitality. Don't worry. I will make sure they won't give us any lunch boxes." After tea (and some more snacks), we said goodbye and headed to the Jade Mountain National Park.

It was quiet and beautiful, unlike Alishan National Park which is a major tourist destination and is always packed. Farmer Zhang took out a bag with an assortment of snacks from his car and told us we should take a walk. After an hour or so, Farmer Zhang asked us if we were hungry. We all said no, and some tour members said they could skip lunch. After the walk, we went back to the car. Mr. Zhang opened his trunk and took out a butane burner and a big pot and told us it's time for lunch. I didn't know Mrs. Lin had prepared some soup stock and vegetables for us, so all we had to do was to heat up the stock and add noodles. There we were at a parking lot in a national park, cooking noodle soup. It was delicious and we had a lot of fun!

Farmer Zhang is no longer very involved with tea farming and he is lucky that his son-in-law is very interested in tea. It was great to see the next generation taking up tea farming work. I met his son-in-law, Ah-Chon, back in 2005. He was a very polite and quiet young man. Throughout the years, I have seen him stepping up to take over the business. He is very enthusiastic at sharing what he discovers.

Ah-Chon likes to experiment with tea. Last year, he let us taste three teas that were from the same day's harvest, but he applied different roastings to them. It was great to taste teas like that and it was great to watch him talking about them. I love to see that smile and the light in his eyes when he talks about his work.

I love to be in that specific part of Alishan, so tranquil and surrounded by trees and bamboo forests. I love to eat the food from Mrs. Lin and love to drink tea with Mr. Zhang over many conversations about his life philosophy. I love taking walks with the family after dinner when the fireflies are out.... The Zhang family make the place more special and it shows in their smiles.

Tea Stories

Lately, I have been having problems writing. I don't know what to write! However, if you ever come to drink tea with me, you probably will notice that I won't stop talking about tea. So in the past weeks, I made the effort to keep track of what I've been saying. Aside from talking about how to identify good tea and how to taste it, I often talked about my tea experience. Here I am in Seattle, excited about going back to Taiwan to learn tea in May. I'd like to write down my past tea experiences to connect with the future tea learning.

When I was a child in Taiwan, I often saw people drinking tea. Back in my hometown, I saw LaoZuenCha(老人茶,Old Man's Tea) tea making(aka Gongfu tea) in my cousin's house for the first time. My cousin and I are the same age. Her father had a huge metal tea tray set on a table and that was where he made his tea. The tea tray and lots of his teapots had a lot of tea stains due to the frequent tea making. When I went to visit my cousin, he would always ask me if I wanted a cup. In a lot of places of Taiwan, people don't mind that children drink some tea. Those were my first tea experiences. My own family didn't drink tea. As a kid, I never really pondered why some people drink tea and why some don't.

When I was a teenager, I drank a lot of bubble tea and focused on going to the best universities.

I went to National Taiwan University in Taipei for college. Taipei is very different from where I grew up. It's much busier. A lot of my high school friends also went to Taipei and we would hang out once in a while on the weekends. Our favorite thing to do was to escape from Taipei for a day. We would ride our scooters to places with more greenery and had a good time walking around and eating (Food is very important for Taiwanese people and we are constantly eating). My friends told me about a tea house on the hills outside of Taipei. So one weekend, we decided to visit. I met the owner, Mr. Tsai who currently makes our Taiwan Wuyi Oolong. My fond memories of tea started here. If you ever ask me what I remember about tea, I will tell you about this memory of my friends hanging out in that teahouse, drinking tea, chatting, playing games, eating snacks, and having a good time. I remember tea is actually really fun!

I was learning English in university so I tried very hard to save money to be able to come to the states to practice my English. One summer, a family in Florida told my friend that they would host me. So I went to stay with the family for two months.

I believed that tea represents my culture. Besides some art objects, I brought the family a gongfu tea set as a present. One evening, we all sat down and I was supposed to show them how to make tea in a tiny clay teapot. I proceeded with the Gongfu tea and wow, that tea tasted terrible! I always watched people making tea in Taiwan, but I never really sat down to make a pot of tea. Nobody commented on the tea. I think they tried to be polite.

Back in Taiwan, I continued hanging out with friends in different tea houses and totally forgot that I in fact couldn't brew a good pot of tea.

To be continued....