Reflections on my Tea Journey

Upon returning home from my tea trip to Taiwan and Japan and blogging about it all, I am still amazed at the beauty and diversity of each region. However , what impressed me the most about the trip was the people! Everywhere we went, the people were so gracious to our group. We were greeted so warmly and all seemed to want to share their knowledge of tea with us. Many of them bestowed gifts of tea to us just for stopping by and listening! As I steep the teas that were given to us or the teas I purchased from places we visited, my appreciation of what is in my cup grows so much more.

I thought it to be such an honor to be in the presence of such educated tea individuals and yet they always seemed honored by our presence as well. The patience given to our group of Tea Master Steve as he taught us how to make oolong tea was impressive. The process of making my own tea was also very high on my list!

Getting to meet the farmers who put their effort into giving me a wonderful cup of tea, makes each infusion so much sweeter. Now as I drink the tea, I remember from where it came and who made it taste so special. Tea Master Steve and one of the farmers pictured here traveled several hours through the mountains to come to our graduation ceremony in Taiwan before we left for Japan.

I have to admit after hearing stories, I was somewhat apprehensive about traveling to Asia before I left . I had heard about the dangers of drinking the water and getting sick from the food. To be quite honest, the eastern-style bathrooms even made me a bit nervous! The culture in Taiwan and Japan are definitely different than here in the USA, but I would go back again without any hesitation and hope to very soon.

Thank you to all who put in their time to make our trip so educational, especially the hosts for our trip Thomas Shu and Josephine Pan.  If you are interested in going this year, registration will begin soon.  I will cherish my time that I was there and will remember (or try to) what I learned.

If you ever have the chance to go Taiwan and Japan and learn more about the culture, tea, and beauty of each country, I highly encourage to do it.  In the June blogs, I am going to get personal and we will also talk about National Iced Tea Month!  If your curious, you want want to miss it!!

Happy Sipping and Fondly Remembering the People of Taiwan and Japan, Lisa

Taiwan Day 7 & 8 Shopping, Making Snacks, and the Tea Leaf Hopper

Happy New Year, please join me as I continue my blog of my wonderful tea adventure to Taiwan and Japan!

After returning to Taipei about 11:00 p.m. from the our journey to the tea fields of central Taiwan, checking back into our hotel, and gathering our luggage that we left behind, we were all pretty tired.  Our next day started a little later as we were traveling close by.  Our first stop was this lovely little town just about an hour away.  The town had a scenic river running right through it.

We toured of factory that supplies tea for an international company that is known around the world.  Due to confidentiality, I cannot share the name of the company which is disappointing! What struck me was how immaculately clean the facility was.  Can you see the floors are stainless steel?  I hadn't ever seen that before and was wondering how I might install that somewhere in my house!  Some tea was in the baskets to the right withering and to the left were bags full of tea ready to be sent off.

After touring the plant, we walked out to see some of the gardens.  Here is Jackson Huang talking with one of the tea farmers.  I would have brought back one of those straw hats if I could have figured out how to get it back without crushing it.  I think it would have been fun to hang it in my office!

The rest of the day was for shopping in Yinge, which is a ceramic town that specializes in tea sets that harmonize well with Taiwan oolongs.  Some of group shopped for their stores, but since I don't owe a tea shop, I was shopping just for myself and gifts for others.  Here is my Christmas present to myself.  It is a handmade piece that over time will take on a crackled look.  I LOVE it!

Our next day was filled with more learning experiences.  We headed to the Oriental Beauty district. Our first stop was to a museum to learn about this area and tea farming.  This part of Taiwan was settled by the Hakka people which is a subgroup of the Chinese with their own linguistic dialect.  Our guides Thomas and Josephine happen to be Hakka, so it was fun at the end of our museum tour to make a traditional Hakka snack.  

It starts with sesame seeds, black and white peanuts, and pumpkin seeds that are ground up into a paste.  We were shown how to use this large "mortal and pestle" type system for grinding it all up.  It required some elbow grease for sure.  It tasted quite good all on its own.

After it was all ground up into a paste, we spooned it into cups that contained green tea powder and puffed rice. Hot water was added to it for a Hakka "protein/energy" drink! There were also a few other snacks as you can see!

Probably the most intriguing thing to this area is the Fancy Formosa Silver Tip tea.  Its wonderful and unique flavor is contributed to the leaf hopper.  It is a small little bug that eats the leaves of the tea plant during a specific period in the summer. Seen below on a Camellia Sinensis plant, this small bug has a huge impact on flavor! 

While the farmers are busy with their other crops, this bug infests the tea plants. This attack makes the plant respond with a chemical defense to help it repel the insect and protect itself. As I learned in my last Specialty Tea Institute Level 4 Technology of Tea class, that this stress to the tea plant is known as a physical biotic stress. The compound that the plant produces to rid itself of the bugs actually changes the flavor of the leaves to a wonderfully unique brew. Now how cool is that?   

Our next stop was to visit Mr. Lou who is the head of The Formosa Black Tea Company.  We all felt famous as we stepped off the bus to a camera crew filming our visit. 

 

We watched an informative film and toured the facility which has a lovely display of the history of the company.  What I thought was very interesting is the way Mr. Lou and his company has kept up with the demand for tea and changed its ways depending on what the market is demanding.  His company is now a large supplier of green tea powder to Japan for beauty and cosmetic products. If you have beauty products that contain green tea-it might just be from The Formosa Black Tea Company!  I was honored to meet Mr. Lou seen below. 

 

Our final event of the day was the Grand Cupping.  It was set up by Norman Shu of ABC Tea Company.  We cupped (professional way to taste tea) about 30 different type of teas.  It was the biggest cupping I had ever done at one time. 

Join me for the next blog as I take you to our closing ceremony.  Then I have my own Planes, Trains, and Automobiles experience to Japan!  I hope you can keep journeying with me to Japan. 

Is there anything new you learned through my blog?  I would love to hear!

Happy Sharing Taiwan and Sipping Oolong, Lisa

Taiwan Day 2

My Taiwan experience continued on day 2 after some much needed rest!  I was amazed how fast I acclimated to my new time! After a delicious breakfast at the DongWu Hotel where our group was staying, some friends and I headed out to our first Taiwan department store adventure called Carrefour. It isn't like any other department store I have been to.  The street level is actually the top floor of the store.  On that level is clothing, kitchenware, and cosmetics.  It also had a few small restaurants as well.  I thought the advertisement for the noodle restaurant was interesting. The large plastic noodles actually go up and down on the chopsticks and into the big red bowl to attract customers!

The next level down is a full fledged grocery store which was amazing.  My friends Lynayn, Hoda, and I walked around wide-eyed at all the intriguing foods.  I know the locals thought we were crazy as we all began taking pictures of the seafood.  It was different than what we were familiar with in North America.  My picture isn't the best as I had to rush to take it because they told us we couldn't take anymore photos of the fish.  I am not sure why that was, but we obeyed and moved on as there was so much more to look at!

We all bought some snacks for our extended stay in Taiwan.  We then wandered down the escalator to the third floor.  This escalator was different than any I had been on before.  It wasn't made of stairs, but a large moving ramp so that you could accommodate a shopping cart on it if you desired.  This level was full of electronics, small appliances, and what became of utmost important to some in our group, LUGGAGE!  Several from our group returned later to buy more luggage so that they could take home all their new purchases from Taiwan.  I was close to buying luggage, but ended up okay and within my international weight limits with my one large bag and my carry on!    We then left to get ready to go to Wistaria Tea House...



 As we pulled up in our taxi on the busy Xinsheng South Road in Taipei, we almost missed the tea house. It was very unassuming from the street, but as you can see, once you enter through the gates you feel transformed. There was a beautiful fountain and pond full of fish on the left side, to the back was a quiet place to sit, and to the right was our entrance. I was surprised to see that it was a mixture of Japanese and Taiwanese styles. We were required to take off our shoes and sit on pillows on the floor for our tea at low tables.





As I opened the menu, I couldn't help but notice this lovely saying on the inside. It says, "The Fortuitous Meeting of Strangers Destined to Be Friends." For most of those that are deeply in love with tea, I believe this saying is so true. Tea is a connection to the world and new friends! This rings true with my trip as I traveled with some I knew, some I knew a little, and some I didn't know at all, but all became friends through our tea journey and learning!

I had a wonderful time drinking tea and eating with friends at the tea house.  The generic house tea is served throughout the meal.  I ordered the chicken cooked with tea which came with many wonderful sides as you can see. You could taste the tea in the chicken as well as it sprinkled on the top.  The vegetable mixture up at the top was delicious in a ginger/soy dressing.  The salad to the top right was also a favorite!

 

Lynayn Mielke, East West Tea Emporium, Hoda Paripoush, Sloane Tea Company, and Newman Johnston, Teas Etc



After we finished our meal, we ordered tea from their menu. We selected three teas that were served in the gongfu style. Two of our teas were oolongs-one the house special and the other was a 30 year-aged one! We also ordered a 1960's puerh as well. After our waitress served our initial infusion of our first tea, we each took a turn steeping additional infusions. We infused each tea at least three times. The 30 year-aged oolong and the puerh were delicious. 

Gongfu is a wonderful way to serve tea.  The teapot they served the tea in was a yixing style one.  With each new tea that we ordered, they brought out a new teapot to use.  If you would like to read more about the gongfu way of making tea or yixing teapots, I wrote about it in the China chapter in my book, The World in Your Teacup.   Oh how I wish you could have smelled the teas as they infused.  The were intoxicating.  We enjoyed a full afternoon of eating, talking, laughing, and drinking tea.  Isn't that what going to a tea house is all about?

We returned to our hotel, to prepared for our registration and opening ceremony for the 2010 Taiwan Oolong Study Tour. Our group received our welcome bags which were full of goodies such as our itinerary, cupping sets,  and chopsticks (We were asked to use our chopsticks for our entire trip-I proceeded to lose them immediatly on the first night.  Thank goodness they were found as I didn't want to be the problem group member.)

 

We then proceeded to walk over to the offices of the Taiwan Tea Manufacturers' Association.  They were the sponsors of our trip.  We all introduced ourselves and made a brief statement as to why we decided to come on the trip.  We then studied the six Camellia Sinensis cultivars that we would be seeing over the next week. I am not sure if I could identify them in a blind test, but I did get to be quite familiar with several. We then had a lovely dinner at a Japanese restaurant as we all became more aquainted with each other.  We all walked back to our hotel excited about discovering the tea fields of Taiwan.  A BIG thank you goes out to Josephine Pan and Thomas Shu who were our lead guides/hosts for the entire trip!

In my next few blogs, I will take you to the tea fields of Taiwan! I hope you can join me.

Happy Sipping Taiwan Oolongs, Lisa