Tucked away in the lush hills of Taipei County is the Taiwan Ping Lin Tea Museum (坪林茶業博物館), which was conceived during the burgeoning in popularity of teahouses that started in the 1970s.
According to the museum's director Liang Hsiang-tian (梁祥田), the idea to build a museum arose when Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), then governor of Taiwan, tasted the fragrant Wenshan wrapped tea (文山包種茶) for which Pinglin (坪林) is famous, and liked it so much he asked then mayor Cheng Ching-lian (鄭金蓮) what he wanted for his town. Cheng asked for a fashionable teahouse to be built, which could serve to represent the area's main industry, that of tea growing and processing. As the project took shape, it evolved into the Taiwan Ping Lin Tea Museum, which broke ground in 1987.
The project continued through the tenure of four mayors but finally opened in 1997. It was the second museum of its kind, the first having been completed in Hangzhou (杭州), China, in 1991.
The Pinglin museum covers an area of 0.83 hectares, and its facade, which mixes modern and classical Chinese architecture has enhanced the landscape of a rural district which has few buildings of distinction. Speaking of what has become a major landmark in Pinglin, mayor Liang Ching-sheng (梁金生) said, "It's like a beautiful flower in our town, a cultural symbol, that is surrounded by green leaves." The museum, which cost NT$200 million, attracts 6,000 visitors a year.
Pinglin is one of the few towns in northern Taiwan that are still dedicated to tea cultivation. According to Liang, Pinglin is representative of a traditional tea town in Taiwan. "It's very hard to find such towns in northern Taiwan these days. Most tea towns along the Tamsui River have faded away."
The tea museum, which also incorporates a tea house and a display center for tea-related products, such as tea wine, tea candy and tea cake, is a fascinating repository of tea items.
The first-floor exhibition space features exhibits of equipment used for making tea decades ago, along with historical data showing the rise and fall of Taiwan's tea industry. Among other interesting items, this section shows how Taiwan has shifted from being a major tea export country in the early 1970s, to a country that now imports 23,000 tonnes of tea each year. Taiwan's own production is now relatively insignificant in world terms, Liang said.
Liang, who serves as the museum's guide for many of the foreign guests arriving at the tea town, has extensive knowledge of the tea industry's development in Taiwan and loves to share his stories with visitors.
Taiwan began to export its own tea directly abroad at the end of the 19th century, with much of the export business being conducted by major European trading firms such as Swire and Jardine Matheson, which had made their fortunes in the opium trade.
"[The export business was] first based on baihao oolong tea (白毫烏龍茶) and paochung tea, and later on green tea," said Liang. "The tea export business trained the first batch of professionals in Taiwan's export business."
While it may be easy to regard tea as no more than a beverage, the tea museum is living proof that there is a strong educational element that can be conveyed in a fun way to visitors.
"Sometimes we have visitors who are brought here by tour groups and don't show much interest at first. But then they realize there is so much they can learn about tea that they don't want to leave," Liang said.
RSS