Journey Through Taiwan's Teahouse Culture

Follow the tea leaf, from an organic farm in Pinglin to the fog-draped teahouses of Jiufen and Taipei's quietly radical new wave, to discover that what holds the tea matters just as much as what's in it.

- BY STEPHANIE ZHENG

In Taiwan, an offer of tea is as instinctive as a greeting.

It happens in living rooms and back offices, across shop counters and before any real conversation begins. By the time I made it to Pinglin to visit Yu San He (a pioneer of Taiwanese white tea and one of the region's most quietly influential growers), I had already sat down for tea at least once a day in the past two weeks.

At his farm, the terroir argument is made quietly and without fanfare. His rows of organic tea grow without pesticides or shortcuts on a plot he calls “Respect for Great Nature Farm”. Talking with him, you understand that a tea journey begins there, in the soil, and ends in teacups, a plethora of them he has gleefully collected over the years.

Taiwan is a place where tea serves as a social glue, and nowhere is that more evident than in a teahouse. Spaces that range from century-old hillside institutions to design-led sanctuaries share the same unhurried conviction that tea deserves more than a takeaway cup. To spend time in them is not simply to follow a crop from mountain to cup. It is to understand something about how the Taiwanese move through the world.

Heritage Held In Place: Traditional Teahouses

Perched on a mountainside in Jiufen’s fog-laced alleyways, the very popular Ah Mei Teahouse was born from the town’s own resurrection, originally a blacksmith shop run by Ah Mei’s grandfather during the gold rush era, later transformed into a teahouse when the mines fell silent.