Taipei – Tea Farms

熊空茶園
Xiong Kong Tea Plantation

Xiong Kong Tea Plantation in Sanxia District, Taiwan. We were lucky to be able to see tea picking in action as there is a week or longer gap between each harvesting session. This is also one of the fewer farms that still does tea picking by hand as opposed to using pruning machines. There is also a cafe near the entrance with a terrace that overlooks the mountains. We saw a drone operator there who was trying to capture images of cherry blossom trees from above. He was dressed with National Geographic gears, but we didn’t find out if he worked for NatGeo or if he was a NatGeo enthusiast.

Before visiting the tea farm, we stopped by 三峽羊肉榮 which is a restaurant that specialized in lamb meat.

坪林區
Pinglin District

Located on the southeastern Taipei, this rural district known its tea business and the world’s biggest tea museum called Pinglin Tea Museum (坪林茶業博物館). This used to be a popular stop for anyone going from Taiwan to Yilan County, but after the highway was built, the traffic to this area reduced and many of the businesses closed doors. The museum has been renovated recently and it feels modern, but the rest of the district feels run down and there are many buildings that appears to be abandoned or unmaintained.

Shops and residential area are across the river from the Pinglin Tea Museum side.

I did not see very many vintage cars while I was in Taiwan. This was one of the few.

Inside of the Pinglin Tea Museum.

Lunch break after the museum visit. This place sold tea oil (not to be confused with tea tree oil) which is also used in all of their cooking.

Most of the shops sell tea or products derived from tea.

Apparently, 80% of the residents in this area are tea growers or are involved in tea business.

Pretty amazing how nature finds its ways. For some reason, this reminded me of the movie “Annihilation”.

This area is popular amongst motorcyclists as the road is unobtrusive with fewer cars. With that said, we also noticed lots of reckless riders.

Once you go up the mountain, you can see lots of tea plantations built along the terrain.

All pictures taken with Fujifilm X-H1 with XF16-55mm and XF50-140mm.