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Earthquake survivor takes family tea business to Internet

The devastating Sept. 21, 1999 earthquake not only killed thousands of people, but destroyed the livelihoods of many.

One survivor, however, has transplanted the family tea business to a profitable plot on the Internet.

Cheng Kuang-hsien (鄭光憲), 35, is finding new horizons selling home-grown tea online.

Cheng is a third-generation tea farmer from Minchien, in Nantou County. After the quake, he was left with nothing but ruined tea plantations and a de-stroyed infrastructure where no tourist would dare venture.

While some farmers chose to go to China to restart their tea plantations and businesses, and even more abandoned their generation-to-generation careers altogether, Cheng decided to go online.

Starting as a computer illiterate who only knew how to play Nintendo games, Cheng managed to learn over the past three years how to build his own homepage, his own Web site, dubbed "Teahome" and put his products on the Internet.

Now he grows his own tea from seedlings and then cultivates tea bushes and processes the leaves. Tea of guaranteed quality at reasonable prices (NT$190 for a 150g bag of tea) has won Cheng customers in Taiwan and beyond -- including the US, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Hong Kong.

From Cheng's Teahome Web site, customers can shop for various teas and learn how to store and make tea. Innovative ways of making tea that Cheng has recently developed include how to make "cold tea" by dipping the leaves in cold water, instead of the traditional way of using boiling water.

With annual sales reaching 2,400kg, the tea from Teahome has been cited as excellent product by e-Bay and by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, according to Cheng.

Cheng said he has been approached by increasing numbers of his fellow farmers in Minchien, who ask him to incorporate their tea products on his Web site.
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