Tea Time in Maokong

Chris and I both enjoy drinking tea, especially since Google has conditioned us to expect "tea time" every afternoon, where multiple flavors of tea and small pastries are served to us at our cubes, off cute little carts. (Sooo nice of them, I love tea time.)

Of course, it's not like we were starved for tea at this point, since tea is served with every meal in Taiwan, but we thought it would be fun to visit a "real" Asian tea house. I was afraid that we would have to venture too far outside of Taipei to find such a place, but it turned out that the nearby suburb of Maokong was well known both for growing tea and for having lots and lots of nice tea houses. Even more compelling was the way to get to Maokong; we definitely wanted to ride in the cool new Maokong Gondolas, which just opened to the public recently.

So Chris and I took the MRT down to the end of the brown (Muzha) line, where we caught a ride on the Maokong Gondolas for $50 TPE, which is like $1.50 US. This seems shockingly cheap for a 25-minute gondola ride over some beautiful mountains with gorgeous views of Taipei City below. I mean, consider what $1.50 buys you on Caltrain. (Answer: Nothing. The cheapest fare is $1.75.)

When we arrived at Maokong, we were somewhat overwhelmed by the number of busy teahouses, street vendors, tour buses, and restaurants immediately outside of the gondola station. So we started walking along the road to see what else was around. Here's Chris with what presumably are some tea bushes on a hillside:

We encountered many hiking trail entrances along the way, which would have been fun to try if we'd had more time. We also saw a temple and lots more tea houses, some of which had funny signs. I think these (ahem) well-meaning people had the "use 'well' instead of 'good'" rule drilled into them too hard:

We finally stopped at a quiet place called Shan Shui Ke (Mountain Water Guest?) where they recommended that we try the Oolong tea, a favorite in Taiwan. They also gifted us with a complimentary bag of tangy/sweet red pickled plums that went very nicely with the tea. We sat outside so we could get a good view of the mountains (though the fog obscured most of Taipei).

You'll note that this looks like a very complicated setup, but here's how it works:

1. First, the waitress brought out the hot pot (the black one in the picture) to get the water boiling.
   
2. Once the water started boiling, the waitress brought out the rest of the kit. She put the tea pot and tea cups into a wide bowl, and poured the steaming water over everything, to demonstrate that it was clean.
3. She then opened our pink cannister of Oolong tea (which we bought earlier at the counter) and scooped enough to fill a quarter of the small teapot-for-two.
4. She poured the hot water into the teapot and then, to our surprise, immediately poured out all the water from the teapot into the metal tray. Apparently the purpose of this is to "wash" the tea leaves, in case they have any residual pesticides or chemicals.
5. She then filled the teapot again. We were told to let it steep for 40 seconds. While it was steeping, she also poured hot water OVER the little teapot (which was still sitting in the bowl), and filled the bowl with hot water in order to keep the teapot (and its contents) warm.
6. At 40 seconds, we expected to finally have some tea poured into our cute tiny cups! But wait. First she poured all of the tea from the teapot into a small ceramic pitcher. She explained that this would prevent the extra tea from getting over-steeped while we drank the first cups. Smart! Plus, we could start steeping the next batch while we were drinking the current one.
   
7. At last, she pours us each some tea from the pitcher. Oolong tea has a very light and refreshing taste, and we were certainly thankful that it was so nice and warm!

Definitely a fun experience. But on the other hand, tea bags and a hot water dispenser are pretty clever too. :-)