AmCham arrow Publications arrow Topics Archive arrow Topics Archive 2006 arrow Vol.36- No.6 arrow Maokong ? Hillside Haven for Tea Fanciers
Maokong ? Hillside Haven for Tea Fanciers PDF Print E-mail

The hills of Mucha have become a popular weekend and holiday retreat for those who wish to sip some tea and have a bite to eat in a scenic setting.

BY MARK CALTONHILL

 

Taiwanese, like most peoples around the globe, are fond of claiming grand titles for themselves and their nation. Nevertheless, given the dozens of brands of bottled, boxed, and canned tea available in convenience stores, not to mention the specialist stores where dried leaves for home infusion can cost thousands if not tens of thousands of NT dollars per catty, the islanders' oft-repeated claim to be the world's foremost tea drinkers starts to sound plausible.

Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that one popular weekend and holiday retreat for Taipei residents is the former tea-growing and now tea-sipping area of Maokong (貓空) in the hills of the city's southern Wenshan (文山) district. Almost a century ago, the area's moist climate and good soils became the foundation of a thriving tea growing and manufacturing industry that exported leaves all over the world. Even today, the 100-plus hectares of plantations still produce around 60,000 kilograms of tea each year, though much of this is now consumed in situ.

The small village of Maokong lies at the far corner of a rhombus-shaped area that now shares its name. The origin of this name, which means literally "cat holes," is far from clear. The most widespread explanation seems to be that stream water had eroded long fissures in the rock face nearby, which to local eyes resembled the scratches left by a cat's claws. Wenshan apparently used to be called Quanshan (拳山; "fist mountains") because of the shape of the hills. But like many old Taipei place names, this was considered somehow vulgar and so was changed to the vaguely similar but more elegant Wenshan (meaning something like "civilized mountains"). The origin of Muzha (木柵; "wooden railings") is much clearer; like many other Taiwan place names, it is derived from the defensive community measures taken in wilder frontier times.

Mountainous and covered with trees, the Maokong area has a single main road that loops in a big circle until it brings visitors back to their starting point. For safety reasons, on weekends when the traffic is heaviest, travel is only allowed in the counter-clockwise direction between 4 p.m. and midnight.

A couple of small buses (S10 from Wanfang Community MRT and Brown 15 from Taipei Zoo) travel in the same direction throughout the day, and will stop wherever asked (just stick out an arm). For most visitors, this will be outside the front gates of one of the dozens of plantation teahouses, but for those wishing to work up a good thirst, it can also be at the starting point of one of the many trails that crisscross the higher hills.

Those interested in more exercise can hike all the way from the National Chengchi University in Muzha or from Zhinan Temple, which can be reached by the 530 bus from Gongguan or Wanfang Community stations. This very popular temple dedicated to Lu Dong Bin (呂洞賓), one of the Eight Immortals worshiped by Daoists, is worth a visit if time allows. Beware, however, as local legend says that men and women should not enter together or they will leave separately.

While on the subject of transportation, a green light has been given for construction of a cable car, which from November - and for a cost of around NT$100 per person - will carry passengers at 20 kph from Taipei Zoo via Zhinan Temple to Maokong, 4.8 kilometers away in the hills.

Given that many teahouses operate 24 hours a day and that the moon and stars are probably clearer here than anywhere else in Taipei, taking a hike first is well recommended. The trails, some of which are quite ancient, are mostly paved with stone steps. Nevertheless, sturdy shoes are required - as is mosquito repellent - since the bamboo stands and thick undergrowth tend to be warm and humid.

For those whose lives and livelihoods keep them pretty much tethered within the confines of the capital city, views southward from these trails offer a glimpse of the high mountains that represent the real, but often overlooked, Taiwan. Bending to avoid large webs that spiders weave across the paths, hikers will also have a closer interaction with Mother Nature than downtown Taipei, its Da-an Forest Park included, can hope to provide.

The city government's website for Maokong lists more than 20 bird species regularly or occasionally observed. These include the ubiquitous treepies, white-eyes, fulvettas, bulbuls, redstarts, and wagtails, as well as more exotic crested serpent-eagles, Chinese bamboo partridges, Formosan magpies, grey-capped woodpeckers, and Hodgson's hawk eagles.


At the Tea Promotion Center

If a brisk up-and-down hike has not yet stimulated one's thirst, or even if it has, it is worth putting off lunch to make a quick visit to the Taipei Tea Promotion Center for Tie Kuan-yin Tea and Pao-chong Tea at No. 8-2, Lane 40, Zhinan Road, Section 3 (台北市文山區指南路3段40巷8弄2號). Despite this frightening-looking address, the center is not tucked away, but rather is on the same road and bus route as the many teahouses. The center provides abundant information with adequate translation to tell most visitors everything they might want to know about the history, science, technology and even etiquette of tea.

The center's tour begins with the equipment, both traditional and modern, used to transform freshly picked leaves into the aromatic beverage. This process starts with the withering of leaves in bamboo trays under the sun and then on withering racks in drying rooms. The large trays allow the leaves to be turned and shaken, though nowadays this is more likely to be done by machine. Light shaking damages the leaves, freeing olfactory chemicals and starting "fermentation."

Although called fermentation by analogy with winemaking, this is actually a process of oxidation. It is allowed to continue in a moist room for a desired period - baozhong, tie guanyin, and oolong are all semi-fermented teas with fermentation levels of 15-50% depending on the flavor required - during which the leaves change in color from green to copper-brown. High-temperature panning machines are then used to inhibit further oxidation, after which the leaves are rolled to press out excess juices.

The exhibition continues with a display of tea-making and drinking utensils, followed by a detailed introduction to the various teas grown and manufactured in Taiwan. Here the translation is not so good, or more likely the original Chinese texts are of specialist interest only. Finally, the center teaches visitors the proper etiquette of making, serving, and drinking tea.


Find yourself a teahouse

The best way to learn about tea drinking is not in a museum, of course, but with a friend or two in a pavilion beside a tumbling stream in Taipei's historic tea-growing area. Maokong has dozens to choose from. The standard operational practice here, as at many Taiwan teahouses, is to buy a small packet of tea (prices start around NT$200) and "rent" tea-making equipment and water (around NT$50 per person) - although visitors are welcome to bring their own tea and pay a higher rental fee.

Taiwanese do not generally drink tea with the formality of the famed Japanese tea ceremony, which uses elaborate handcrafted implements and green tea powder in specially constructed "tea cottages" at the bottom of rich people's gardens.

Nevertheless, as soon as Taipei residents get together with a few friends, they tend to "appreciate Camelia sinensis" (品茗; pin cha - see sidebar on The Language of Tea) rather than simply "drink tea" (喝茶; he cha). When they do this, the event often does take on highly ritualistic overtones, similar to those of the Japanese ceremony and, presumably, the Chinese ceremony from which it was derived a millennium or so ago.

While such "appreciation" is sometimes done in homes and offices, a popular weekend pastime among Taiwanese is to journey to a particularly attractive and mellow location, and sip tea, eat snacks, chat, play go or Chinese chess - or, more likely these days, a game of cards - listen to nature, and watch the sun set and the moon emerge. Given the Taiwanese people's entrepreneurial nature, their "tea cottages" are now typically commercially run "tea art houses," and Maokong is one of the best places to indulge in this pastime.

Basic tea-making equipment includes a kettle, bamboo scoop and tweezers, teapot, jug and strainer, cups (which may come in two shapes - tall and narrow for smelling the tea, low and broad for sipping it), and a huge deep tray for everything except the kettle. Once the water starts to boil, it should be poured liberally over and into all the vessels and utensils, and then poured out. A small amount of tea leaves are scooped and then tweezered into the pot, and hot water added until it overflows. This first infusion should also be poured away; its function is just to "wash the tea."

Subsequent infusions are all fine for drinking, but generally the third, fourth, and fifth are considered best. Each time, the brewed tea is poured from the pot through the strainer into the jug, then from the jug into the tall cup, and then from the tall cup into the low cup. First the aroma remaining in the tall cup is smelled, then the tea is tasted from the second cup. All drinkers should be drinking the same infusion at the same time, so that they can discuss the tea's qualities.

Freshly boiled water is recommended - otherwise it is said to taste "flat" - but only black teas should use 100 ?C water. Semi-fermented teas use cooler water, and green teas perhaps as low as 80 ?C.

Some of the teahouses sell food, though few if any are famed for it. Most allow customers to bring their own. Typically this means convenience store snacks carried up the mountain in preparation. For those with a real hunger, the Maokong area has a few restaurants, most of which sell dishes containing free-range chicken supposedly reared locally. Most popular is "three cups chicken" (三杯土雞; the cups referring not to the quantity of chicken but to the dominant flavors - one cup each of soy sauce, sesame sauce, and rice wine).

Care should be taken, however, because "field chicken" (田雞; tian ji), although sounding not unlike "earth chicken" (土雞; tu ji), is frog meat rather than free-range chicken. It too is sold in Maokong, in similarly named dishes such as "garlic with field-chicken" and even "three-cups field-chicken." Some of the restaurants also prepare fresh mountain vegetables.


The Language of Tea

Of the only 50 or so words in the English language that derive from Chinese, not surprisingly a few are connected with tea. The following list includes most of these, plus some other words that will help make a trip to Maokong more enjoyable.

茶 (cha) tea; interestingly, while Indian ("chai"), Turkish ("cay"), and Russian ("chai") are clearly derived from the Mandarin or similar north China pronunciation, the English ("tea"), French ("the"), German ("tee") and many other pronunciations derive from the Taiwanese, or more accurately, Fujian Province pronunciation "dey." This presumably reflects whether the product was imported by overland routes from northern China or by sea routes from Fujian and Taiwan.
喝茶 (he cha); "drink tea."
茗 (ming); a less-common word for the tea drink, leaves, or plant. (hence the translation used in this article of Camelia sinensis, the scientific name for the tea plant, there being no suitable synonym in English).
品茗 (ping ming); "appreciate Camelia sinensis" rather than simply "drink tea/"
飲茶 (yam cha) in Cantonese; meaning "drinking tea" but referring more commonly to eating 茶 (dim-sum; "dian-xin" in Mandarin).
茶道 (cha dao) tea ceremony; literally the "way of tea."
綠茶 (lu cha); "green tea," often called "Chinese tea" in English, because Assam teas are more suited to making "black tea."
紅茶 (hong cha); "red tea," known in English as "black tea." This is made from leaves of the same species of plant, which have been allowed to oxidize ("ferment") for different lengths of time.
烏龍 (wu long); meaning "black dragon" and more commonly spelt "oolong" in English, this semi-fermented tea is particularly popular in Taiwan.
鐵觀音 (tie guan-yin); "iron Guanyin," perhaps because of the rust-like color of its infusion. Guanyin is the Chinese name for the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, who is popular in Chinese popular religion as well as Buddhism.
白毫 (bai-hao); the English name pekoe comes from a southern dialect and means "white down," indicating that the leaves were picked when still young enough to have small hairs on them. This term is now used for certain black teas from India and Ceylon.
小種 ; (xiao zhong); "souchong" in English, meaning "small kind," therefore, a black tea made from young leaves.
珍珠奶茶 (zhenzhu naicha); "pearl milk tea," commonly known as "bubble tea," it was created in Taiwan by adding tapioca balls to sweetened milk tea, but is now gaining fame around the world.


A Few Tea Facts:

* Tea leaves are harvested from the Camelia sinensis tree, which is indigenous to the Himalayan foothills of northeast India (Assam) and southwest China.

* Chinese mythology tells that the beverage was discovered by the legendary Shen Nong ( 神農 ; "divine farmer") when some leaves fell into water he was boiling. Shen Nong and Lu Yu ( 陸羽 ), author of the eighth-century Book of Tea ( 茶經 ), are worshiped as gods of tea.

* In the wild, tea trees may grow to 5, 15 or even 30 meters in height.

* Tea grows best in subtropical monsoon climates with wet, hot summers and cold, dry winters.

* Chinese have drunk tea - or originally eaten it as a soup - for thousands of years.

* Marco Polo's 13th-century book, Il Milione, makes no mention of tea, and there is no evidence that Europeans knew of it until the 16th century. After introduction, it was initially consumed only by wealthy people and became heavily taxed.

* British people became so fond of the drink that demand helped cause the trade deficit with China that led eventually to the First Opium War of 1838-42. Later the British established plantations in colonial India.

* In the tea trade, Taiwan is still referred to as Formosa (and Sri Lanka as Ceylon).

* Because it requires boiling water, tea-drinking is said to have helped bring about Britain's industrial revolution by killing water-borne diseases such as dysentery and cholera, which were a menace in cramped urban environments.

* Originally Americans also drank large amounts of tea, but after they protested Britain's taxation policies by drinking less of it and throwing crates of it into the sea at the Boston Tea Party of 1773, coffee became more popular.

* Most of the tea consumed in the United States is served cold or iced. Most is sold in tea bags. Tea bags were perhaps invented and were certainly popularized by a New York tea trader named Thomas Sullivan around 1908.

* Tea, in its dry form, has more caffeine than coffee, but as a drink contains less than half as much.
 
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