"Taiwanese" Tea-culture vs. Chinese

Cuisine Food & Drink
1

I just want to run the following past you guys for a smell-check.

I recently created a Squidoo Lens called “Taiwan Tea” (http://www.squidoo.com/TaiwanTea/).

[quote]I love simple, but high-quality teas. So I am fortunate to live in Taiwan, which produces some of the best teas in the world. I also love the uncomplicated rituals of preparing social tea in Taiwan. I use the term “social tea” to distinguish the common, day-to-day preparation of tea from the more formal gongfu tea and wu-wo tea ceremonies and also from the wide variety of modern “tea bar” style teas. In Taiwan, this style of tea preparation is called lao ren cha, or “old man’s tea.” But this style of tea preparation remains common in among Taiwanese in their homes and businesses, regardless of their age.

The difference between gongfu tea and old man’s tea has more to do with the surroundings and intent than the method of making tea. Gonfu tea is prepared in more serene surroundings, is more contemplative, and is tea-centric. Old man’s tea is relaxed, done in any surrounding, and is more focused on socializing or business.

I also refer to this as a “Taiwanese” style, rather than a “Chinese” style. This comes from my personal experience living in China and Taiwan. While I am fully aware that the implements and practices that I describe here are are based on the traditional Chinese gongfu style of tea, this method of preparing tea is uncommon in day-to-day business and social settings in modern China, whereas they remain quite common in modern Taiwan. Having lived and worked in both China and Taiwan, my experience has been that in Chinese homes and businesses, the host will most commonly offer you a cup with with tea leaves on the bottom over which they pour hot water. When the leaves begin to sink to the bottom, the tea is ready to drink.

In Taiwan, both in offices and in homes, it is common for the host to offer tea prepared with a tea set. The differences between Chinese and Taiwanese tea customs was driven home by a recent business trip to China. I spent a month with a Taiwanese friend and business associate visiting a large number of Chinese-owned and Taiwanese-owned factories around Shanghai.

Without exception, every Taiwanese expatriate had a tea set in the room where they entertained business guests, which they used to prepare tea in the old man’s style, working the pots as they discussed the business at hand. At every Chinese business we visited, we were offered a tall cup with tea leaves. Besides the language being spoken (Taiwanese versus Shanghaiese or Mandarin), this was the only major way I could distinguish whether it was a Taiwanese or Chinese owned enterprise.

Taiwan has long and rich history as a tea-producing and tea-consuming society. It is most famous for it oolong tea, which is considered by some to be the best in the world. The cultivation and harvesting of tea is taken very seriously in Taiwan and is considered a highly-skilled occupation requiring years of training and experience. Oolong is considered to be particularly appropriate for the gongfu/old man’s mentod of preparing tea, which may account for the prevalence of this custom in Taiwan. [/quote]

Do those of you who have travelled/worked/studied/lived in both Taiwan and China agree with the above? Or am I way off base?[/quote]

2

Sounds about right to me. (Mainland) Chinese friends in the UK always did that tealeaves-in-the-cup thing. It works alright though sometimes the tea gets a bit of a stewed flavour.

3

I saw a lot of the laoren cha style when I went travelling through Fujian province, especially in Wuyi Shan and Yongding. They seemed to take it just as seriously as older Taiwanese (younger Taiwanese caring a lot more about what kind of pattern the barrista can foam up on top of their espresso).

4

Absolutely.

In Fujian and large swathes of southern China, in particular, the whole tea circus is equally as intense as it is in Taiwan. With rising incomes, more are opting for fancier tea sets, tea and appreciation.

HG

5

Makes sense since the ancestors of the Taiwanese brought the oolong tea culture with them from Fujian. Most of my time in China was in Beijing, Wuxi, and Shanghai. I toured many other cities, but I really only visited folks homes or had business meetings in those three cities. I’ll update my lens to note that tea culture is regional.

6

I don’t think it is fair to call gongfu tea a Taiwanese style because it definitely originates in the Mainland rather than Taiwan - and still survivies there.

The thing is that it is very regional. In southern Fujian and across into Eastern Guangdong (cities like Xiamen, Yongding, Meizhou, Chaozhou and Shantou) gongfu tea is the standard way of serving tea socially. If you get chatting with a shop or restaurant boss they inevitably offer you tea. If you are buying tea in these places you can also expect to get a sample brewed up for you and served gongfu style. They tend to brew the tea in a lidded cup and then pour into small cups rather than using a teapot though.

It gets less common but is still prevalent as you go into central Guangdong, and in central and northern China you just don’t see gongfu tea outside specialist tea shops and tea houses. There you can tell you are in a Taiwanese invested industrial zone (like Kunshan outside Shanghai) when otherwise non-descript restaurants make water boilers and tea sets available on every table for guests to use(instead of the waitress bringing a large teapot over).