Written by Pauline Harlay
Image credit: Tea Mountain. Photo by the author
“Observing tea to make tea” (看茶做茶 kan cha zuo cha)
This phrase is repeatedly used by Taiwanese tea producers to explain how they manufacture tea. This saying embodies the most important ability a tea producer should have: the ability to observe. Producers who are good at observing make “good” teas. They are constantly assessing tea leaves, drawing on smell, colour or perceived humidity levels to decide how the leaves are to be processed. Within this process, being able to “read” the environment is also crucial. Sensing humidity levels, observing the growth of tea bushes, knowing the climate and the soil are part of tea makers’ calculations. Being a tea maker means training the body and cultivating the right knowledge to make the best manufacturing decisions. It is about attuning the self to one’s environment and the tea-making experience.
I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, a period which required my interlocutors to not only observe tea, but also navigate constantly changing circumstances. Beyond COVID-19 restrictions, one major challenge for them was worsening relations with the PRC. Increased tensions roughly coincided with and were shaped by the pandemic. In the summer of 2019, China unilaterally prevented independent Chinese tourists from travelling to Taiwan “in view of […] cross-strait relations”. These travel restrictions were tightened by the Taiwanese government in early 2020 to offset the spread of COVID-19. In parallel with these interruptions, the flow of goods and food also became blocked. In August 2022, Beijing issued a sweeping import ban on Taiwanese-produced food following Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Although Taiwanese exporters continue to sell tea in the PRC, this measure has weakened tea exporters’ interest in the PRC market in the medium term. The most important foreign market for Taiwanese tea as of 2026 is the US, with 30% of imports. This is an important change from the beginning of the century, when many Taiwanese merchants heavily invested in the Chinese tea market, in the process also shaping local ideas of quality and authenticity, as well as manufacturing practices (Yu 2010).
These drastic changes have led to new perceptions and sales strategies among most of the Taiwanese tea merchants I interacted with. Even before the ban of 2022, Taiwanese food producers were already starting to “search for Taiwan’s flavour”. For Po-Yi Hung, defining the taste(s) of Taiwan is also a way to claim and reclaim national borders amid persistent geopolitical tensions. It is a way of telling the distinct story and identity of Taiwan, both domestically and to the world. As such, finding the taste(s) of tea is also about defining a kind of authenticity embodying national identity.
What my research reveals complements Hung’s conclusions. As I observed how people sold tea, I quickly realised the importance of Taiwanese taste(s) in my interlocutors’ sales strategies. To merchants, these strategies were not only a way of attracting interest and distinguishing themselves in the tea market, they also reflected an increasingly strong commitment to proving the distinctiveness of Taiwan. In the remainder of this article, I will discuss one particular facet of these strategies, which centres around the originally French concept of terroir. I define the adoption and localisation of terroir as both a commercial and political process.
Terroir is usually translated and framed as “taste of place”. As a cultural and, in some contexts, legal concept, terroir posits that elements such as climate, soil, altitude, humidity and production factors define the typicity of a product (Trubek 2008). In this process, food producers also play an important role. Their understanding of their region, as well as their sensory training, makes them localised actors involved in producing a localised commodity. This means that producers are also moulded by their own terroir. Furthermore, they often subscribe to local notions of quality which are inherited through experience, and the sharing of production techniques and preferred flavours between members of their community. They produce teas in inherently localised ways, which is also reflected in the kan cha zuo cha (看茶做茶) saying.
Despite its French origins, and connection to the local, terroir has been widely accepted and adopted around the world. As in Taiwan, it is used as an economic and political tool to certify food quality and protect regional economic interests. For example, the notion of terroir has been used to create labels certifying the origin of a product. European Protected Designation of Origin (PDOs) are cases in point of this, as they create a legal framework that restricts the production of foodstuffs to particular locales, while guaranteeing the authenticity, quality and taste of these products. Terroir is therefore a device granting prestige, serving to attract investment and promote regions and foodstuffs to consumers and tourists.
In Taiwan, the word terroir can be translated as fengtu (風土), which carries similar undertones. An alliance of “wind” and “soil”, the concept characterises the dynamics shaping the specificity of a region and its products. It maps Taiwan into different areas, where people’s tastes and customs differ. The geographical mapping of people and taste is reactivated when actors in the tea industry re-appropriate the originally foreign concept of terroir and localise it for their own needs. In such cases, terroir acts as a way of promoting a region and its producers.
The terroir logic helps local actors justify the quality and authenticity of their teas, which have become increasingly important as they try to attract new customers domestically and internationally, while competing with the PRC. The PRC is seen as an important competitor: it has been the leading tea producer in the world for some years. The Chinese and Taiwanese tea industries mutually influenced each other through cross-strait exchange and the work of Taiwanese entrepreneurs in China (as discussed in Tan & Ding 2010). These two industries, therefore, target similar clientèles, a concern reflected in the Taiwanese government’s ban on Chinese tea imports. To make matters worse, recent scandals over the mislabelling of Vietnamese tea as “Taiwan” tea have made concerns over origin an even more pressing issue.
In addition to these economic concerns, asserting Taiwan’s tastes is part of a nationalistic logic. As encroachment from China intensifies and Taiwan remains misrecognised on the international stage, economic competition is fuelled and driven by strong desires for recognition. Presenting Taiwanese teas as refined and distinctive products contributes to sharing the story of the island with the world, highlighting its distinct geography and historical trajectory. The concept of terroir/fengtu is a channel to achieve this goal. If the taste of teas is shaped by their origins, then they can also tell us about this origin, which is itself the product of people’s interaction with the land. As such, the terroirs of Taiwanese teas not only represent distinctiveness, but they also embody it through taste. Defining terroirs, therefore, contributes to creating a differentiated yet exportable narrative about what Taiwan is.
Image credit: Former president Tsai Ing-wen posts about the distinctiveness of Taiwanese tea (source: Tsai Ing-wen’s public X account)
This terroir strategy is evident in the way most of my interlocutors discuss their teas. In the tea industry, an unwritten rule is that teas need to be assessed through drinking, which occurs in both formal and informal settings. As I drank tea with my interlocutors, they often recognised and commented on teas based on their places of origin. For instance, they could tell whether a baozhong tea was from Shiding (石碇) or Pinglin (坪林) in the Greater Taipei area despite their proximity, due to the more distinctly floral aroma of Shiding tea. They knew that Shiding used specific processing techniques resulting in this aroma, which then came to embody Shiding. Experienced tea drinkers may be able to guess the producing locations of tea when they taste it, sometimes narrowing it down to the producer if they are acquainted with them. When they assess the origin of a tea, these drinkers also rely on their knowledge of climates and recent weather conditions: whether a year was dry, misty or rainy may directly affect the taste of tea. This taste is mediated by well-practised producers who make tea as they see fit (看茶做茶).
Image credit: Shiding, a terroir of forests and mountains (photo by author)
The terroirs of Taiwanese tea locations also become fixed in more formal terms. Nowhere is it more obvious than during tea competitions, yearly or bi-yearly events organised by local actors. These actors may include Farmers’ Associations, officially chartered cooperative organisations that support local agricultural communities. Competitions are also supervised by the Tea and Beverage Research Station (TBRS, 茶及飲料作物改良場), an organisation under the umbrella of the Council of Agriculture, which sets local quality standards and judges the contests. TBRS plays an important role in terroir-making, as it provides local quality benchmarks and effectively crystallises the typicity of teas. Likewise, competitions also serve to regulate prices, ascribing economic value to both teas and locations. As such, they are mechanisms that ensure the quality of teas within and beyond their locations. As teas from a location become seen as more prestigious, their economic value may also rise. This is the case for Oriental Beauty from Hsinchu – a famous tea which dominates over the hierarchy of taste. In 2021, for example, one jin of Oriental Beauty made by the winner of the county summer competition was worth NTD660,000.
Though terroir strategies attempt to stabilise the taste and price of teas into widely accepted norms, they are inherently unstable processes that are constantly ongoing. During my time in Taiwan, I had the opportunity to observe marketing attempts at promoting a relatively new type of tea: Red/Ruby Oolong (紅烏龍) from the Taitung area. One of these attempts involved an exhibition in one of Taipei’s Creative Parks, which was partly co-organised and sponsored by the Taitung City Government in July 2022. This exhibition featured details about the history of Red Oolong, information about producers and manufacturing processes, as well as a description of the ecological environment where tea bushes grew. The exhibition also presented Red Oolong as a brand with a distinctive logo. This reveals Taitung City Government’s attempt at promoting both the tea and its region of production. In this process, Taitung and Red Oolong become interrelated, representing one another.
Image credit: logo of Red Oolong (source: Red Oolong Tea Cooperative)
What’s more, the exhibition also featured a “flavour wheel” created by TBRS. The role of flavour wheels, which have become increasingly popular, is to show the desired organoleptic qualities of a tea. They provide roadmaps helping tea drinkers assess the quality of teas. In the context of the exhibition, they worked to portray the distinctive taste of Red Oolong, while seeking to present this taste as desirable to potential customers – the intended audience of the event. Overall, this event can be read as an attempt to create terroir by defining the taste of a tea in relation to its area of production. This promotes Taitung as an attractive location producing high-quality and distinctive tea.
Image credit: Flavour wheel for Red Oolong displayed at the exhibition (photo by author)
When someone drinks a cup of Oriental Beauty or Red Oolong, they are tasting more than climate, soil, and producer skill. They are tasting the outcome of deliberate efforts by producers, merchants, and government bodies to define a place and assert its distinctiveness. These efforts are both commercial and political, and their stakes are likely to grow as cross-strait tensions persist. As such, kan cha zuo cha extends beyond the tea farm. Attuning oneself to one’s environment in order to act within it captures something of how Taiwan itself navigates an uncertain geopolitical position. The maxim goes beyond producers’ wisdom, as it becomes a metaphor for how Taiwanese people negotiate their economic success and identities.
Pauline Harlay is a Research Associate at the Food Studies Centre, SOAS University of London. She completed her PhD in Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS in 2025. Her thesis explores the ways Taiwanese tea merchants construct cultural value through trade practices. Her research draws on 10 months of fieldwork in Taiwan and engages with broader questions of cultural economy, culture and geopolitics.