A Hakka temple in one of the old Hakka neighborhoods. These are nomadic settlers, moving about China and ending up in Taiwan, where they were not only responsible for some of the most outstanding culinary delights, but also, the founders of Taiwan Beauty. Today, the Hakka people live near the Shinjhu and Miaoli areas, producing some of the most amazing oolongs in the world.
Does this look like a hotel to you? it’s more like a pottery barn! Called the Tung Ting Lodge, the one and only hotel on top of the mountain and in slight walking distance to the rolling tea hills and producers’ village. Mrs. Su, for example is exactly 5 minutes away. It’s convenient to stay at this rustically magnificient lodge when the tourists can go witness tea production at night. Except that there was, alas, no tea production this time due to the drought. Instead, we asked the owner to show us his pottery, and everything changed. Suddenly, we were not pesky tourists. We were appreciators of his craft, and that meant all the world to artisans like him in Taiwan, where money is not the point and appreciation the only thing that mattered. He gave us a tour of his collection; apparently exhibited in museums worldwide and students come far and near around the world to learn from him, he was actually a famous pottery master. To think that all these years, I brought tour groups here just to enjoy the view and be walking distance to the tea producers in the village must have been greatly insulting! Fortunately, my group this time were enthusiastic about glazes, and the difference between bean husk glazes and high fired celadon vs. ox blood. This tour is always unpredictable and culture is all around us!
The lodges
The one and only hotel at top of Tung Ting Mountain is somewhere between a bed and breakfast, a pottery workshop, and a museum.
The fog rolled in and all the world was a white milky haze. Hiking up steep inclines of 70 degrees at times, we huffed and puffed to the top of the world: the world of tea that is, at 2000 meters. Paying homage to the High Mountain oolongs is crucial to anyone considering themselves tea enthusiasts, and climbing a hill that high and that steep allows one to fully understand what ‘High Mountain’ means.
San Lin She, Taiwan, is home to huge purple blue bamboo groves, ginkgo trees and fragrant flowers, and one of the world’s most sought after oolong teas, with an intense floral fragrance all its own unforgettable character.
The tour group struggled to the top before the view was completely obscured. Thankfully the rolling curves of tea bushes were magnificent and plentiful in view for the strenuous hike to be worthwhile!
We tasted a crop harvested 2 days ago, and it was rich and floral. The considerable drought means the taste will be more intense than other years. Each cup of High Mountin oolong is evocative of the energy of the mountain, and all the drama and tragedies of a global weather changes that the tea plants struggle to adapt to. We taste and remember each differing year- like meeting a new friend each time, some more to our liking than others, all came with their own story.
Sunrise at Tung Ting mountain
Good tea grows on great environments. At top of Tung Ting Mountain, the air is clean and crisp, and layers of distant surrounding mountains peer through the considerable fog that shroud the hilltops. Tea needs good constant fog to nourish the leaves; hard drenching rain causes root problems and waters down the taste. The good news is, there has been no rain for 50 days now and the tea is excellent- fragrant and full bodied. The bad news is there will be less than half the normal yield as such a drought is too extreme. Global climate changes are varying too much for farmers who rely on the farmer’s almanac, and as we trekked through the mountains today, hardly anyone was picking tea and no one was producing.
Alas, being a farmer, even a tea farmer, is not so glamorous. No matter how skillful a producer you are, you can not control the weather.
A bomb dropped when Mrs. Su took out her dowry oolong, one that is now 20 years old. She has been carefully tending and roasting and aging it since the day she brought it over on her marriage. The tour group was floored. They could not believe how smooth, how utterly lacking astringency, how energetically it completely changed and grounded them. One of the tea enthusiasts declared: ‘If this tea doesn’t get you to enlightenment, then you can’t get enlightened!’ Mrs. Su generously steeped this tea 8 times.
This year has extensive drought, which means the teas are fantastic but the yield is low. The poor farmers like Mrs Su are too conscientious to raise the prices if the teas are superior than last year, nor will they raise the prices because of scarcity. They will just suffer the financial shortage, life and death according to weather. But the charcoal roasted oolong was so sweet and balanced and fiery all at once; Mrs. Su is no doubt the pro of the pros. The tourists have come to realize: she is the real deal, and one person declared: she is a national treasure!
Mrs. Su’s big dream though? Grow a bigger cabbage than her neighbor.