Taiwanese Tea Art Beyond the Lens of Tradition

Written by Thiago Braga.

Image credit: Tea Garden in Alishan. Taken by the author.

Today, it is impossible to be in Taiwan without encountering tea. It is sold as a souvenir in some of the country’s main touristic attractions, from Ximending to Jiufen’s old street, historied teahouses like Amei, Yao Yue and Wistaria are go-to destinations for foreign and Taiwanese tea enthusiasts alike, and the Pinglin Tea Museum of New Taipei City boasts the world’s largest tea museum. As one immerses oneself in this world and becomes more and more acquainted with the flavours and fragrances of the high mountain oolong teas that have given Taiwan its unmistakable identity and staying power in the world of tea, one gets the dual sense of a thriving domestic market (which at the elite levels can command staggering prices) and of a deep-rooted connection between Taiwan and tea. While this connection is indeed present—as historian Lian Heng 連橫 documents in his seminal work General History of Taiwan 台灣通史 (1921), tea has been cultivated by Fujianese immigrants since as early as the 18^th Century—the emergence of a sophisticated culture of brewing and tasting, generally referred to as Tea Art (茶藝), is a relatively recent development. In this short essay, I trace the emergence and trajectory of this phenomenon, but rather than treating it as a “tradition” (invented or otherwise), I hope to show the significance of viewing it as a dynamic, continuously shifting practice that reflects and animates the (geo)political, sociocultural, and economic transformations of Taiwan. 

Tea Art emerges at a specific juncture in Taiwan’s modern history, which three paradigmatic events can triangulate. First, the loss of official statehood placed mounting difficulties with export procedures, forcing a turn to the domestic market. Second, the Taiwan miracle led to fast-paced economic development that would turn Taiwan into one of the Four Asian Tigers—which had the dual effect of creating a new urbanite middle class but also leading to rising wages across sectors, increasing the costs associated with tea production, necessitating higher prices and the transformation of tea from a staple to a speciality product. Third, the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement, launched in response to the attack on traditional culture promoted during the Cultural Revolution, sought to portray Taiwan as the preserver of Chinese tradition-at-large, and to foster social cohesion and national unity during the White Terror years through the cultivation of a Chinese cultural identity.

It is in this context that tea is turned from an export commodity to a cultural heritage destined for domestic consumption, with the founding of the Republic of China Tea Art Association in 1982 (中華民國茶藝協會). The Association brought together government officials, tea enterprises (in particular TenRen 天仁, its main financial backer, and one of the most prominent tea companies of Taiwan today), farmers’ associations, agricultural scientists, and a class of self-styled “tea masters” tasked with the effort of curating and spreading the practice of tea drinking as a refined cultural activity. Already in the naming of this phenomenon we see relational politics unfold: the term chayi (茶藝), chosen in lieu of the more readily recognisable chadao (茶道 “the Way of tea”), reflects a deliberate choice to distance Taiwanese tea culture from Japanese influences, for the term chadao would be a homonym with the Japanese chadō, which is utilised to refer to that country’s matcha-based tea ceremony. At the same time, the term chayi has no root in Chinese history, nor does it correspond to a specific historically rooted practice. These dynamics are evident in the account of an interlocutor I interviewed during fieldwork, an original member of the Republic of China Tea Art Association. According to them: 

“At that time, China was really down due to the Cultural Revolution, so we felt the need to save the mainland Chinese. Many overseas Chinese looked up to Taiwan, because we were becoming so prosperous. At that time, we also sensed that we were losing our cultural identity. During the 80s, President Chiang Ching-Kuo really invested a lot of money in promoting Chinese tea culture. That was the moment Tea Art started to distinguish the traditional Chinese tea culture that we preserved and is different from what is promoted by the Japanese worldwide.” 

It has become common to consider Tea Art a “ritual,” albeit one that, due to its lack of historical rooting, constitutes a so-called “invented tradition.” While there is some truth to this claim, I believe that this lens is not the most appropriate to fully grasp the significance and complexities of this phenomenon. Looking more closely at the Association’s activities, however, we can glimpse that its efforts surpassed the curation of ritualised forms of brewing and tasting tea. In effect, the Association worked to at once modernise the production of tea, standardising it to recast tea as a speciality product, while redefining the cultural politics of tea drinking at a time marked by geopolitical vulnerabilities and ambitions combined with fast-paced economic development. It worked to create new high-mountain tea regions (such as Alishan), develop cultivars suited to such new environments (for example, Jin Xuan 金萱 and Cui Yu 翠玉), introduce novel processing machinery (such as electric drying machines), and promote tasting competitions among farmers (a still extant practice). On the consumption side, newly created Tea Art Houses (茶藝館) would renew the image of teahouses—formerly seen as sites of gambling, prostitution, and other morally questionable activities—as places of refined cultural entertainment. These Tea Art Houses would popularise a brewing form known as Gongfucha, or as it was known in Taiwan, “Old People Tea” (老人茶), which is estimated to have originated in the 18^th Century in Southern China, consisting of small brewing vessels and a potent leaf-to-water ratio, drunk through multiple infusions.  

Another problem with viewing Tea Art through the lens of the “invented tradition” is the implied assumption that it is static, that it proceeded unchanged through the political and sociocultural transformations that took place in Taiwan—particularly democratisation (民主化) and the localisation (本土化) movement. Here again, a closer look reveals that this is not the case, as Tea Art not only reflected the changes in Taiwan’s politico-cultural landscape but also enabled its citizens to embody, affect, and at times even contest these changes. As the cultural discourse of the Chinese Cultural Renaissance gave way to Taiwanisation and as the earlier project of building a domestic speciality tea industry proved a remarkable success, Tea Art became increasingly seen as an emblem of Taiwan’s natural environments and historical trajectory, marked by different migratory flows, political projects, and ethnic influences. 

To be sure, the early wave of tea masters remained deeply committed to what they viewed as the unmistakable “Chinese roots” of Tea Art, with some turning to China as the latter began to place heavier emphasis on cultural revival and “heritagising” its own tea industry, where they are received as purveyors of authentic Chinese culture and heralds of reunification. Nevertheless, as Tea Art continued to evolve at the grassroots level without a central organisation that enforces a single standard (such as the iemoto system in Japanese chadō), new generations of tea masters rose to the forefront, each promoting their own approach and understanding—infusing Tea Art with new significance.  

An example of the latter is another interlocutor from my fieldwork, master Xie, who promotes what she calls “The Way of Taiwanese Oolong” (台灣烏龍茶道). As this name suggests, Xie roots Tea Art not in Chinese culture, but in Taiwan and its flourishing oolong tea industry. Reclaiming the term chadao for a Taiwanese context, she explains that “when some people hear chadao, they may think that we are studying Japanese chadō (日本茶道). But that is not the case. Here in Taiwan, we drink oolong tea, which Japan still cannot produce. That is why our Taiwanese oolong tea is so popular there. I reclaimed the term chadao and brought it back into use.” At the same time, this gesture of reclamation is not rooted in traditional notions of Chineseness, but rather in an effort to distinguish a Taiwanese tea lineage. She explains: “At first I thought that we were doing Gongfucha, because Gongfucha is very precise. It emphasises the quality of tea leaves, water, tea wares, and brewing skill. But when I went to Chaozhou myself, I saw firsthand how far we have come from Gongfucha. I feel that our tea leaves and brewing techniques, having evolved, are still very much Gongfucha. On this foundation, we’ve developed the contemporary Tea Art that we practise today. This is the result of years of evolution. When I went “searching for roots” (寻根) in China, I thought, ‘Wow! How are we so different!’ But I felt happy about it—I feel that we have contributed to Taiwanese society and culture.” This account allows us to view Tea Art not through the static lens of tradition (which invites a subsequent critical analysis of its “authenticity,” that is to say, the degree to which it is actually historically rooted), rendering it instead as a malleable and contemporary phenomenon, continuously changing and being changed by Taiwan’s social realities.

Image credit: Tea Setting (茶席chaxi) prepared for a demonstration of master Xie’s “Way of Taiwanese Oolong.” Taken by the author.

More recently, Tea Art was fit to represent Taiwan on the global stage at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture. The Taiwan pavilion featured a “circular teahouse” built from sustainable materials, which aimed to portray Taiwan’s approach to sustainability and acquaint a foreign audience with Taiwanese culture through multisensory tea-based activities and installations. Besides scheduled tea tastings, these included renditions of Sio-Po-Kua (相褒歌 xiang bao ge), a Hokkien-derived folk-singing form traditionally performed by the tea farmers of Pinglin, and the sniffing of perfume bottles that emulated the aromatic profiles of Taiwanese oolongs. As the head curator explains in an interview, the choice of basing the exhibition on Taiwanese tea culture was a way to show the mutual composition of natural and cultural elements that make up the realities of Taiwan. As she explains: “Through a cup of tea, you can understand Taiwan’s ecology and culture. A cup of tea can help you understand Taiwan’s humanities (人文) and life. Taiwanese drink tea at temple entrances, under trees or in pedestrian arcades. We also drink tea in the gazebos in the parks. We call it “tea space” because Taiwan is a culturally diverse nation. As long as there is a space, we can serve tea, appreciate tea, discuss and experience (體驗) Taiwanese tea culture.” 

Image credit: Circular Teahouse at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture. Source: Supertex.

The above examples shed light on the trajectory of how Taiwanese people relate to tea and how this relation has animated political, economic, and sociocultural transformations. Tea culture, more than being a simple locus of “ritual” and a “tradition,” is a ground upon which Taiwan’s modern history and geopolitical realities are negotiated and not only made sense of, but more specifically “sensed.” From an anthropological perspective, Tea Art invites us to consider how the human sensorial qualities—taste, smell, hearing, touch, and so on—become deeply connected to the longue durée of history, becoming arenas that re-signify Taiwan’s colonial history, cross-strait tensions, and its post-localisation political projects. In this way, I believe that the example of Tea Art allows us to shift analytical focus from representations of tradition (and the litigation of their degrees of authenticity) to the dynamic, lived practices that give “traditional practices” their force and legitimacy as they are transformed and given new meaning in changing contexts.

Thiago Braga is an anthropologist specialising in tea practices across Taiwan and China. His research explores how tea culture intersects with notions of cultural heritage, nationalism, subjectivity, and the geopolitics of cross-strait relations. He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Davis and is currently a Research Associate at its Global Tea Institute for the Study of Tea Culture and Science.

This article was published as part of the special issue on ‘Taiwan Tea Cultures and Relational Routes‘.