Seven hundred metres up, a whole hillside of tea: Xiongkong, Sanxia

Forty minutes out of Taipei into the hills at Sanxia, then ten kilometres up Zhulun Road. At the top is a bowl of a valley with tea rows curving down around it in rings and several big trees left standing where they already grew. I went over the Tomb Sweeping holiday in 2019 — since then the place has changed hands and changed its name.

Come off National Freeway 3 at either Ankeng or Sanxia; both routes end up on Zhulun Road. Past Taiwan Tea Corporation’s northern refining plant there are still about ten kilometres of mountain road: narrow, tight bends, and you pull over to let others past. Those ten kilometres take the longest of anything on the trip.

What is up there

At the top the land opens into a bowl. The tea rows follow the contours down in rings, with mown grass between them that gives underfoot. Several big trees have been left standing in the middle of it, their trunks thick with epiphytic ferns, and the rows simply bend around them. Azaleas are planted along the edges; in early April they were out, clumps of red caught in all that green.

Around Tomb Sweeping the hill is often raining or in cloud; that day it closed over and opened again, the same view changing twice inside ten minutes. At seven hundred metres the difference from central Taipei is noticeable — take a jacket.

The tea here

The site runs to 168 hectares at around seven hundred metres. Taiwan Tea Corporation describes the whole estate as organic and certified by Tse-Xin, with planting, feeding, pest control, weeding, picking and making all done by hand; the teas are organic Biluochun green, organic oolong and organic honey-scented black. Late spring into early summer brings red-flesh plums, turned into plum wine, jam and vinegar — a seasonal thing only.

Getting there, and what it costs