i mean the majority of the quality products sold here are from japanese suppliers but we get import taxed on them. literally 80% of my household items are from japan. not to mention traffic rules and cleanliness imho
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You really want to open yourself up to the guaranteed backlash this post will create?
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If I preferred Japan I would go live there instead.
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well i for one am happy theyâre not here because if they were still suppressing the production of ćĽçéž teas so they donât compete with domestic japanese green teas. Totally different type of tea and basically totally different flavor but that didnât matter ig. But Iâm happy they came because that gave us éżčŠĺ§, ç´ ç and ç´ éť. So mixed feelings I guess. As long as we get tea Iâm happy tho. And while Iâd miss the lighter oolongs, weâd still have the more heavily fermented and roasted ones, and those are also amazing.
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âShould Taiwan become the 51st US state?â 
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I know several people from the south or Taiwanese with some Japanese heritage that think this way (including my wife). Though, honestly I think they would still prefer to live in Taiwan as an independent country, but make it cleaner, people being more polite, better construction standards, etc.
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I love when people suggest that. Makes total sense for a Mandarin-speaking Asian country with zero connection to the US, thatâs not even officially recognized by the US, to be a US state, of all countries.
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Btw., if that were determining by which country you are colonized, there surely would be a few Chinese colonies around the world. Household items made in China are everywhere, even in Taiwanâs homes probably even more than Japanese items.
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80% of what I own says âdesigned by Apple in California and assembled in Chinaâ.
Which country should I be colonized by?
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IIRC they were developed by the Taiwan tea research centre since the 1980s. The first by crossbreeding Assam with a local tea wild tea hybrid. I forget how the second was created but itâs far more recent still, probably developed in the 2000s , as was Red Oolong.
So yes they contributed but only slightlyâŚ
There are different stories about the roasted oolong such as local tea traders did that to preserve their unsold stocks and then locals got a taste for it (to this day folks in central Taiwan still like roasted oolong. the market seems to decrease every year as their customers die off).
And high mountain oolong , according to some accounts, was actually introduced by British tea traders into Taiwan who contracted immigrant farmers to grow it and then promoted it overseas as Forumosa Tea. Although I suspect many Chinese from Fuzhou would have brought it over and grown it anyway .
That started before Japanese took over, but yes you are right specialty oolong only revived FAR after the Japanese left, but in the 80s when the KMT started to drop their monopolisation policies.
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Yes, the specific varietals are more recent â Hongyu in the nineties and Hongyun, an Indian Assam Chinese sinensis blend â but the Assam production in Yuchi township dates very specifically back to the Japanese occupation period. Trees were grafted by the Japanese from India and planted in Taiwan because of the aforementioned repression of the green oolong market, hoping to instead promote Japanese greens internationally. Within Taiwan, the production of black tea became preferable, as the Japanese still donât produce basically any of it. Additionally, theyâre also responsible for what is today the Tea Research and Extension Station, which itself created varietals 18 and 21, ç´ ç and ç´ éť respectively, and was responsible under the Japanese for early hybridization between local cultivars and the Assam ones.
So to say the Japanese contributed only slightly is understatement of the year â they created the demand for it, and executed the steps necessary to bring Assam varietals to Taiwan which may well never have otherwise been done.
I love the roasted oolongs, by far my favorite Taiwanese teas. Iâll take a dong ding or a dong mei any day. Love love love. So good.
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Yeah man itâs all good I see you are very knowledgeable about Taiwan teas. Big fan of Hong Yun myself. Very unique tea with a natural citrus flavour, blew me away first time I drank it, very hard to grow supposedly. My faves are Mixiang Hong Cha from Hualien and Dong Fang Mei Ren from Hsinchu/Miaoli and Hong Oolong from Taitung. Japanese focus on their own hojichas and matchas which can be pretty good. Now back to our regular programming. 
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Itâs not like Reddit where people can downvote/hide any opinion they disagree with. Probably not good to be permanently occupied, but Japan did modernize a lot of the infrastructure. Too bad they didnât get around to the roads/traffic 
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They actually did! We can blame the lack of sidewalks and the narrow pedestrian-vehicle shared streets on the Japanese.
But these sidewalk-less streets werenât originally meant to be lined with parked vehicles, and the speed limit was meant to be lower. We have the KMT to thank for those changes.
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Interesting. I did not know that.
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What the actual F?
Youâve never seen these?
No. What are they?
Taiwan Beer was apparently first produced by the Japanese during colonizationâŚpretty buildings and infrastructure were also left. Isnât 7-11 mostly Japanese owned now? Iâd say recolonization has been happening for years with Taiwanese characteristics. Nah, I live here because I like Taiwan (generally speaking warts and all).
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