The vanished Chashan 01 "lost to Gaoshan tea, favored by the market and frozen-top oolong tea, which was thrown into the cold palace."

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When I came to Phoenix Village, Lugu Township, Nantou, there was a sense of green on the hillside. I thought what would appear in front of me would be the beauty of Tea Mountain, but when I took a closer look, I found that the lighter color of the newly planted vegetable garden, the famous Dongding Oolong Tea tea garden in the past, is gradually disappearing!

In the heyday of Frozen tea in the 1980s, tea vendors robbed tea areas in the spring and winter tea seasons. at that time, the wholesale price of a jin of tea was already about 1600 yuan, and the largest competition tea farm in Taiwan brought frozen-top oolong tea to the peak of fame and wealth.

Nowadays, the planting area of tea area has changed considerably. "you see, the nearby fields are either abandoned and growing grass, or they have all been changed into growing vegetables." Chen Jiahong, a young tea farmer, pointed to the vegetable field in front of him and said wistfully. Looking at it, there are indeed string beans, chlamys farreri, cucumbers, watermelons, ginger, tomatoes and so on. There are also many bean shelves and warm net rooms in the shed.

Although the information on the website of the Agriculture and Food Department shows that the area of the tea area is still more than a thousand hectares, according to the actual census of the local township office, the planting area of the Lugu tea area is actually only 675.5 hectares, which has dropped sharply from 1984 hectares in 1999 to only 1/3. The planting area on Frozen Mountain has been halved from 40 hectares in the past.

An old tea farmer told me that there are very few people who actually grow tea in the frozen-top tea area. roughly speaking, the fields in Lugu Township can now be divided into four equal parts, growing tea, growing vegetables, and growing betel nuts, or else they will be abandoned.

Grow vegetables or tea? The low-altitude Lugu area faces a choice (Photo / Cai Jiashan)

The kung fu of making tea with frozen top oolong is complicated, and there is no new blood to pick up the stick.

In addition to the aging of the tea area, the preparation of frozen top oolong tea is complicated, and it needs to rely on manual work and experience to control the key quality, which is also one of the reasons why it is not easy to inherit.

Chen Yaozhuo, a 68-year-old Lugu tea maker with a slim and flexible figure and smooth and rosy cheeks, said that he had walked through the era of rubbing tea with his hands and feet without the help of a machine, until the machine was added to the modern era of mass production. Read the history of the rise and fall of frozen-top tea.

Among the six major types of green tea, Tieguanyin and Frozen Oolong tea are the thickest. The traditional method takes two days and one night to produce. In the process, great attention is paid to sunlight withering and mixing. "only when the sun opens the valves of fresh leaves can the tea smell fragrant, withered and stirred enough, and the taste will be thick and sweet." Lin Constitutionalism, the seventh generation descendant of Lao Lin Ji Tea Company, recalls making tea day and night when he was a child, and stirring it until he fell asleep several times.

Dongding Oolong Tea attaches great importance to daylight withering and mixing, and takes great pains to stir the tea. When making tea, he observes whether the tea is "soft meat" and then decides the proper handling of the process. In addition to watching the eyes, he also has to listen to the sound of the friction of the tea. "watching the tea to make tea." good tea can definitely not be made according to the SOP.

Compared with green tea and black tea, most of the production process can be handed over to the machine, but frozen top oolong tea can not be fully mechanized, the old master's hand is still a very important key to making tea. Chen Wanping, a tea farmer from the Xinjiayang tribe in Lishan, says that because her father likes Master Lugu, he specially invites them to go up the mountain to help make tea every tea season.

"but now many young chefs are making tea while sliding their mobile phones, which makes people shake their heads." An old tea master in Lugu said helplessly. Another tea farmer said that today's young masters rely too much on machines, and the skill of making tea is not solid enough, which is also an inheritance crisis that needs to be addressed squarely at the moment.

The traditional "frozen top flavor" is declining, and the lower the degree of fermentation, the more popular it is.

Yu Shunde, a scholar at the Academia Sinica, has pointed out in his research paper that in the 1970s, frozen top tea always adhered to the traditional fermentation degree of more than 40%, but now it is only less than 20%, and the degree of fermentation continues to decline. Although this has a lot to do with the fact that the popularity of alpine tea has led to the greening of Taiwan tea and the change of heart of the consumer market (some people blame the chief judge of the competition tea for driving the wind).

In the Lugu tea area, there are three major tea competitions in spring and winter. In addition to the largest peasant association, cooperatives and communities also come out to compete at the same time, forming three tea and steel competitions in the frozen-top tea area. The judges and standards of the three events are slightly different, of which the Yonglong Community emphasizes adhering to the traditional flavor, but Chen Yaozhuo says that in fact, only elderly masters will like this traditional frozen top method. "Alpine tea is very fragrant, but the judges will still choose to eliminate the traditional frozen top, because they think it has a" mixed smell "(not fragrant enough), saying that young people don't like it now."

A tea merchant who sells tea in Taichung also confirms this market phenomenon. "some guests who have attended teacher Chen Huan-tang's class come to the store to declare,'We don't want tea that is too lightly fermented.' But after trying the tea, I ordered the one with the greenish color of the tea. "

Taiwan tea advancing to a high altitude

Drinking tea is a subjective taste, and it seems that it is not uncommon to "like the new and hate the old". Take Renai Township, one of the star tea areas of high mountain tea, as an example, the old tea areas in the past, such as Lushan, Wushe, and Peak, are now in high spirits, but the new tea areas that are climbing higher and higher, such as Cuifeng, Cuilan, Huagang, Lixing, and so on, are now in high spirits.

Frozen-top tea fields are gradually decreasing, and many tea farmers have also moved to Daguang Mountain or Shanlin Creek (Yangzai Bay and Longfeng Gorge) near Zhushan Township to develop new tea fields. Therefore, Chen Fangxuan, director of the Lugu Township Peasant Association, said that although the tea fields on the frozen top mountain have been turned into vegetable fields, the actual area of tea gardens in the frozen top tea area has not been reduced, only to the high mountains. (the article is not finished, please continue to read)

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