On Taiwanese Oolongs
I'm a James Beard Media Award nominee!
Before I get into this week’s paid subscriber post, some news: Made in Taiwan is a James Beard media award finalist in the “Best International Cookbook” category! Which means, I’ll be going to Chicago in early June. I’ll also be stopping by the SF Bay Area on my way back to Taiwan on an extended layover. My trip is from 6/7 to 6/11. Book signing events are currently being planned in both cities, so stay tuned for that announcement.
I knew my publisher was putting my name in the hat, but I did not actually expect to be nominated. Most of all, I’m extremely excited to have an excuse to travel to the States again. It’ll be nice to catch up with old friends, the Taiwanese American community, and rub elbows with food media folks IRL. When I first started writing over a decade ago, I was based in New York City and then Los Angeles where I was constantly meeting my peers at industry events. There’s something kinetic about meeting people with similar passions and skill sets and I miss it. Being a food and culture journalist based in Taiwan can be extremely isolating at times, so I’m looking forward to being amongst like-minded folks.
Now onto the main topic of the week:
On Taiwanese Oolongs
All teas are made with the same plant: Camellia sinensis. But how the plant is processed is what makes all the difference. There are six major categories of tea: white, green, yellow, oolong, black, and dark. And of the six, Taiwan is best known for oolongs—a partially oxidized tea that’s usually rolled and compacted into tight pill bug–like balls. There are indigenous subspecies of Camellia sinensis on the island, but as an industry,
Taiwan’s tea scene started out as a cash crop for export to China during the nineteenth century, propped up by imported varieties that trickled in from the Fujian province of China. The harvested leaves were sent directly back to the Chinese mainland for processing and export, and it wasn’t until a Scottish entrepreneur by the name of John Dodd and a Chinese businessman named Li Chungsheng teamed up and began processing the tea themselves and shipping it directly out from Taiwanese ports to New York that local tea—marketed as Formosan Oolong—became an internationally known product. When Japan took over Taiwan in the early twentieth century, oolong production dropped precipitously. Japan instead jump-started a burgeoning black tea market and established a tea research institute known today as the Tea Research and Extension Station to breed new black tea varieties. But then the Chinese Civil War and then World War II broke out, with the Chinese Nationalist Party eventually taking over Taiwan from Japan. Demand for Taiwanese oolong in Taiwan rose up again, and it remains the darling of the island today.
My favorite oolongs + where I buy all my tea