Miaoli Tea Region
Miaoli’s tea grows alongside silkworms, woodcarving and tung blossom. Laoqi in Toufen has a whole graded set of trails from twenty minutes to two hours — pick by how much walking you want. Shitan has a tea street, Sanxia has the April snow.
Itineraries4
- A day in Shitan: tea street and silkwormsDay tripThe Malinshe settlement → Zhihu farm → the tea street → lunch → the Quanming silk farm → fruit picking at the 123 orchard → riverside park → the village history museumAt Quanming you can pull a silk quilt yourself and walk the mulberry grove; there are fireflies at night.
- Shitan with childrenDay tripWenshui strawberry farm → the Fuxing wild-boar breeding station → the Qingquan native-fish hatchery → the tea street at Yuyue Longmen → lunch → XianshanStrawberries run December to April; outside that the route loses a stop.
- A day at the Ciji tea garden, SanyiDay tripMorning: the Ciji hill walk and the April Snow path. Afternoon: the leisure farms along County Road 130 — fruit picking, woodcarving, forest walking, tea — then the Miaoli Wood Sculpture MuseumThe April Snow path is laid with sleepers; fifteen to twenty minutes brings you to the tea garden. In April and May the petals come down like snow.
- Half a day at Jiuhu: tea gardens and chrysanthemumDay tripTongluo → the tea gardens on the Jiuhu terrace → the chrysanthemum fields in November → the Hakka courtyard house → the Tongluo bike path → backTea and chrysanthemum share the same terrace here. In November the fields go white and the crowds arrive; the rest of the year it is just tea gardens, and very quiet.
Sights and trails
Graded featherweight, lightweight and middleweight, starting from either the Xuanhua Hall or the Yiming tea garden car park. Featherweight runs twenty to thirty minutes, lightweight forty to fifty, middleweight about ninety minutes taking in the ridge pavilions and the Xiangsi path. The loop from Liudong Bridge No.1 is roughly two hours. From the Rixin tea garden end it is a ninety-minute wander through gardens and sweetgum.
Within about a hundred metres either side of the Xindian No.2 bridge on Provincial Highway 3. Tea banquets, tea sweets and Hakka lei-cha are all in this short stretch.
Almost all of Taiwan’s chrysanthemum for tea is grown around Jiuhu in Tongluo, right up against the tea gardens. November is the only month the flowers are out — miss it and it is a year.
Sanyi is the centre of Taiwanese woodcarving. The old street beside the museum is lined with workshops — an afternoon’s worth.
Things you can do yourself
Three generations of tea making, and you can do a run yourself and take the result home. Groups only, by appointment. They keep old equipment on site, including a Japanese-era fixing machine.
Six hectares, working mainly in *phòng-hong* — Oriental Beauty. Garden walks and Hakka tea meals, with occasional children’s tea and pottery sessions. Two of the Laoqi trails start from its car park.
Silkworms, pulling a silk quilt by hand, and a pesticide-free mulberry grove with fireflies at night. Nothing to do with tea directly, and still the best reason to stop in Shitan.