Abstract

This article examines the role of Taiwanese female tea entrepreneurs in the production of contemporary Taiwanese tea culture. From the late 1970s onwards, the Taiwanese tea industry has changed dramatically. Tea has been transformed into a refined beverage, which is alternately framed as a product of Chinese or Taiwanese history. Tea merchants were at the forefront of this transformation, changing consumption practices through the opening of high-end tea houses. Today, tea merchants continue to influence narratives about tea, packaging it into a cultural commodity. Taking this role as a premise, this article focuses on a small group of female tea sellers who are framed as 'entrepreneurs' due to the creative
nature of their work. Taiwanese female entrepreneurs play an active part in the dissemination of cultural narratives about tea—one that is gendered. This can be seen in the ways they represent themselves and their work through social media. As they mold themselves into feminine tea entrepreneurs online, these tea merchants connect ideas of femininity to tea preparation and business success, even as this same femininity constrains and enables them. By relying on technologies of the self, which are themselves shaped by a technological medium, women therefore both (re)gender themselves and tea culture. Through this process, tea and they themselves come to embody discourses of femininity. Overall, the feminization of tea culture highlights the interactions between gendered bodies, class, and the symbolism of food and technologies in the making of food narratives in Taiwan.

Keywords: tea culture, feminization, social media, Taiwan, food narratives