Tea houses
Tea houses
Out to the hills and the sea for good tea; then still by the window, listening to the rain.
A morning picking at Meijia, and a packet of your own tea to take homeThe morning session starts at 9:30 and finishes around 11:40 — two hours. First the history of the Muzha tea hills, then out into the garden to pick, then indoors to make it: firing, rolling, and everyone leaves with a packet of their own.
Mist, tea and a window on the world: the Taiwan Hakka Tea Culture MuseumA new museum on the hillside at Longtan, Taoyuan, opened at the end of 2022. One half is where Hakka tea comes from — Oriental Beauty, the Chin-shin-dapan cultivar, the leafhopper that bites it. The other half keeps six countries’ time on the wall, with a private tea room each for Britain, Türkiye, Germany, Taiwan, India and Japan. The same leaf, and what it becomes depends on where it lands.
A royal tea table in the hills: “Tea and Kings” at the Pinglin Tea MuseumThe only public museum in Taiwan devoted to tea, built as a southern-Fujian courtyard house in the Anxi manner. This year’s special exhibition, “Tea and Kings”, follows the leaf out of the East and into the courts of the West — and along the way, wagashi, yakgwa and the afternoon tea tray turn out to be branches of one story.