Abstract

Since the early 1980s, Taiwan’s tea plantations have spread into mountain areas to grow and harvest better high-quality tea leaves. Tea growers, craftsmen, and experts have developed a new taste and hence a new category of tea, and this has changed the entire landscape of Taiwan’s high mountains. This paper examines how the new taste, known as qingxiang (fresh and fragrant), was invented and how it sparked a whole series of changes in Taiwan’s tea culture, including a new tea tasting style, a new system for evaluating the qualities of tea, and a marked trend toward producing all kinds of teas with qingxiang flavors on both sides of Taiwan Strait. I will pay particular attention to how materiality, technologies, and human intentions work together to make this special taste possible and how the invasion of tea plantations into Taiwan’s high mountains has given rise to serious environmental concerns over the last three decades.