I got off the Taipei subway at the Daqiaotou Station and walked through the streets of Datong District. Unusually for this day, I had a clear destination. I walked straight down a large street towards my destination. There is a well-established tea shop here that has been in business for over 100 years, and I bought some Chinese tea there when I visited Taipei two years ago and it was so good that I decided to revisit it. After walking for a while, I found the shop was still there and it was still the same place as 2 years ago.
While the history of tea is quite old, the history of tea in Taiwan is not so old: it is said that tea plants were brought in from Fujian province in mainland China at the end of the 18th century. And it seems to have come to prominence when the Treaty of Nanking, signed after the Opium War, opened Taiwan's Tamsui Harbor as a treaty port. The British love tea. One of the reasons why the Opium War itself started is that the British were buying a lot of tea from China.
There were big cans of tea here and there in the shop, and the shopkeeper seemed to be busy checking the orders. This store is a wholesaler, but you can also buy tea at retail. I bought some teas at retail, and left the shop satisfied.
By the way, the name of the shop is Lin Hua Tai Tea.
Chinese teas, including Taiwanese tea, are of various kinds depending on the degree of fermentation. In descending order of fermentation, they are called green tea, white tea, dark green tea, yellow tea, and black tea. The ones fermented with microorganisms are also called dark tea, apart from the above. In Taiwan, there is a lot of blue tea, and oolong tea, which is also commonly used in Japan, is classified as blue tea.
No
11292
Shooting Date
Jul 2019
Posted On
November 23, 2019
Place
Taipei, Taiwan
Genre
Street Photography
Camera
RICOH GR III