Written by Hong Jiang
Image credit: Tea fields in Taihe, Meishan Township, Chiayi County, Taiwan. Photo by Hong Jiang.
I started researching high-mountain tea, or gaoshancha, in Alishan (Ali Mountain) in 2019 and have made multiple visits over the years to Meishan Township in Chiayi County, especially to Taihe Village, interviewing tea farmers and tea makers. In this article, I wish to reflect on a topic important to tea farmers: envisioning a sustainable future for high-mountain tea in Alishan, in response to environmental and economic challenges facing the tea sector. The vision I will discuss is not just a dream, but a cultural economy of nature, culture, and care built on tea farmers’ ongoing efforts.
Gaoshancha came to Alishan in the late 1970s and quickly became Taiwan’s signature oolong, with its light oxidation and fragrant aroma and taste. Yet after nearly five decades, as tea transformed Alishan’s hillside and brought economic growth to farmers’ lives, it is facing critical challenges. Environmental factors affect tea trees and tea leaves: soil degradation from overuse, ageing tea trees, and the impacts of climate change; conditions undermining tea-making include large volumes of leaves processed during squeezed tea-making seasons, flavour and price control by wholesalers, and price depression due to imported teas. Let me address these challenges and offer signs of hope from farmers’ own efforts that help shape a vision of a cultural economy for a sustainable high-mountain tea sector in Alishan.
Facing Environmental Challenges
Tea farmers have recognised the issues with the soil in their tea fields: increased acidity, hardened texture, and reduced mineral content have undermined the health of tea trees, and uneven, unhealthy leaves have reduced tea quality. The tea farmers have identified chemical use as a cause and turned to compound fertilisers (which combine chemical and organic content) or organic fertilisers. Yet kinds, amount, and timing of fertilising vary significantly, and scientific guidance is needed.
Chemicals continue to be used, especially in weed and insect control. Tea trees in Alishan are primarily of the Ch’ing-hsin Oolong cultivar, which dominates Taiwan’s tea mountains and attracts consumers with its distinct sweet flavour. But the cultivar is more susceptible to environmental stress and insects. Effective biological methods for weed and insect control are still lacking. The Jhin-hsüan cultivar is more resistant to environmental stress, but its market acceptance is lower.
To reduce chemical use, farmers need guidance and support from the government’s research station. In fact, government efforts have always been important in Taiwan’s tea sector. From the start, the government’s tea research station (today’s Tea and Beverage Research Station, TBRS) helped establish Alishan’s high-mountain tea sector by providing training in field management and tea-making skills. The good news is that, to help address management issues of high-mountain teas, TBRS is establishing an experimental station in Taihe.
The TBRS station will pay special attention to nature-friendly management and climate change, both of which are key issues in Alishan. Regarding climate change, spring drought reduces the mountain region’s highly priced spring tea, and intensified summer heat damages tea trees’ growth. These are exacerbated by reduced fog, which is crucial for creating a moderate environment for producing quality tea leaves. National Taiwan University (NTU)’s geographer Huang Cho-Ying believes that the fog line is moving up, and Alishan’s tea fields are the first casualty among high-mountain tea regions.
Whatever adaptation methods farmers and TBRS may pursue, a likely consequence of climate change is a reduction in tea fields. In fact, since its peak at 2,300 hectares in 2007, Alishan’s tea acreage has been slowly shrinking. Further reductions, if taken positively, could lead to a refocus on quality and on nature-based solutions, an approach I will discuss next through successful examples.
Nature-based solutions, and quality tea-making
Mr Lin Kuang-Li heads the Longyanlin tea farm in Longyanlin Village of Meishan Township. His tea fields have no irrigation setup, but his harvest was not affected by the spring drought. Why?
The Lin family tea farm took a nature-based approach about 20 years ago. They decided to adopt chemical-free field management and relied on the Jhin-hsüan cultivar. During the first few years of this change, their tea trees were so heavily affected by insects that they lost most of their harvests. But they persisted, and good insects started to come and prey on harmful ones. Their harvests have been stable. Mr Lin was not satisfied with the market dictates of lightly-oxidised gaoshancha and decided to make what he sees as the best teas based on the leaf conditions, including different oolong teas, GABA tea, green tea, and black tea. They sell their teas directly to consumers rather than relying on wholesalers, as most tea farmers in Meishan do.
Mr Lin spoke like an ecologist, “You shouldn’t overmanage (the tea trees) but should let them grow on their own; they know where to seek water and nutrients, and their roots reach deep. In the last couple of years, we had severe spring droughts, but our harvests have been pretty impressive.” He philosophised that humans should let nature be itself, and “it will grow into what’s best for itself.” What’s best for nature turns out to be best for humans: Mr Lin and his wife spoke with great joy about the good taste of their teas, the return of the best taste from four decades ago when the tea fields were first opened.
Further along the direction of relying on nature is growing wild tea. Two tea farmers in Taihe have taken this approach: they let their tea trees grow completely unmanaged, and the trees that can withstand environmental stress survive, growing in the shade of taller trees. They have no concern for drought; in fact, a natural tea farmer I spoke with in another area said something that astonished me: “Drought is not a problem but an opportunity for my tea trees to be trained through stress so they produce teas with more unique characters.” Wild-tea production yields about one-tenth that of conventional teas per hectare, so commercially, it cannot become the mainstay of high-mountain tea, but wild-tea practice offers important inspirations for a new way of living with nature.
Care in modern machine-based tea-making
Technology-based tea-making does not preclude care. Award-winning tea maker Mr Li Chan-Feng offers a good example of care-centred and machine-based tea-making. With a background in electronics, he invented a climate-controlled system for leaf withering that mimics the best conditions for natural withering and attends to the details of water transport and water evaporation of the tea leaves. Human care remains important, ensuring that leaf thickness is laid appropriately, oxidisation is well-timed and complete, and leaves are handled in smaller batches to ensure the best process and result. Mr Li uses technological aids to carefully produce well-oxidised, fragrant and healthy tea.
Another aspect of care is to make the best teas based on leaf conditions, rather than making the default gaoshancha. Alishan has been seen as a terroir for gaoshancha, and this regional designation is both a blessing and a curse. In the early years, the gaoshancha branding helped grow Alishan’s tea sector, but over time, tea production has become limited to a narrow taste of gaoshancha imposed by wholesalers. With a warming climate, when leaves are less tender, more oxidisation is desirable, and heavily oxidised oolong or black tea might be more appropriate in some cases, instead of lightly-oxidised gaoshancha.
Integrating Tea Culture and Tourism
Tea farmers Mr Luo Chih-Sung and his wife Yun’an said to me repeatedly, tea is not just a commodity; it is culture. Mr Luo has made efforts to preserve old tea trees in Taihe as part of local history, and Yun’an has been trained as a tea artist. Several young tea farmers I interviewed have been training themselves in tea-making, tea tasting, and tea culture.
While some aspects of tea culture lie in Chinese history, Taiwan has established its unique tea culture since the 1980s, centred on tea art. Hsu I-Chang, a young tea maker who returned home after college, has his own approach to tea culture. He has become an expert tea maker and has built a tea hut, Tryngoal, to extend the family’s tea business. He offers tea tastings to small groups and tries to interact with each guest, telling stories of the tea: its growing environment, its features, and its role in the local place. He said tea is the main character, and we need to pay attention to experience it.
Reaching consumers directly is critical for transforming Meishan’s tea sector into one of quality and diversity, freeing it from the control of wholesalers, and tea culture is the means to achieve this. The Alishan tourist bureau has built roads to tourist sites, and tourist facilities (including food and drink) are concentrated along the main road and at certain sites (such as Fench’ihu). Taihe and the surrounding villages are far from the main road and lack tourist facilities, making it hard to attract visitors. Young tea farmers such as Hsu I-Chang are making efforts to extend their reach. In 2024, a new tea house, Village in the Mist, was opened in Taihe, offering local teas and a small lunch menu; it has since expanded its business through online promotion. Ultimately, the best way to reach consumers is to build a cultural economy that integrates tourism, tea, and tea culture—something imported teas cannot compete with.
Conclusion: A Cultural Economy of Sustainable High-Mountain Tea
Uncle Niu is among the most experienced tea makers in Alishan and also an important teacher of mine in my tea study. During the many hours of conversation with him in his hand-built tea hut, savouring his handmade teas, he shared his desire to make the best teas and his wish to see traditional tea-making skills preserved. The future vision I summarise below meets his approval.
A cultural economy of sustainable high-mountain tea in Alishan includes three key components. First, it is supported by the recovery of soil quality, which benefits leaf health; nature-oriented field management provides the foundation. Second, tea-making focuses on quality rather than quantity. In addition to the signature gaoshancha, there is more room made for different types of tea, including heavily oxidised oolong and black tea, with more attention paid to leaf condition. Hand-based artisanal tea-making and wild tea serve as part of diverse tea practices, complementing machine-based and care-centred tea-making orientated toward consumers. Third, tea marketing is integrated with tourism and cultural education, enabling visitors to engage with the tea mountain through tea-making, tea tasting, and tea culture. Tea is not just a commodity but also a cultural medium through which to share stories of nature (tea trees, leaves, and their environment) and culture (tea-making processes, cultural history, and practices related to tea). The three-pronged cultural economy of tea integrates nature, culture, and care, safeguarding not only Alishan tea farmers’ livelihoods but also a world of fragrant taste that nurtures those who come to find Alishan’s tea, its natural beauty, and its dedicated tea makers.
Hong Jiang, Associate Professor from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is a cultural geographer of China and Taiwan. Her research examines tea culture in imperial China (Tang-Ming dynasties) and contemporary Taiwan. Her larger research project concerns nature-culture relationships and the Daoist approach to nature.
This article was published as part of the special issue on ‘Taiwan Tea Cultures and Relational Routes‘.