Tea Totallers

A New Generation Goes All In in Old Pinglin

Cathy Teng　/　photos by Lin Min-hsuan　/　tr. by Phil Newell

October 2025

中文日本語

On Pinglin’s “Old Street” there are still clues to the early pioneering days, like this house built of stones taken from the Beishi River.

Tea culture started in Asia and later made its way to the West, not only transforming global trade but also the languages of many lands. Wherever this beverage’s pronunciation is close to “tea,” this generally means the term came from China’s Fujian Province or from Taiwan, and was influenced by the Hokkien pronunciation te.

Once upon a time Taiwanese teas dominated the international market, launching the island’s role in the Age of Discovery. Many towns owed their rise to tea, and their fame spread far and wide in its fragrant wake.

Pinglin District in New Taipei City, only half an hour’s drive from metropolitan Taipei, is one of Northern Taiwan’s most important tea-growing areas. It is not only home to the Pinglin Tea Museum, it also has an old quarter with a vibrant atmosphere. Visitors there sense the traces of the lives and economic activities of our forebears who settled there after following the southern route of the Tamsui–Kavalan Trails into the mountains.

History of a tea-growing area

Walking along “Old Street” (Pinglin Street) on a weekday, there is a leisurely feel. The street is not long, and not every shop is open. “Pinglin Old Street has a strong feeling of ordinary daily life about it, mainly because it doesn’t depend on tourism but on the business-to-business tea trade,” says Chung Chen-hung, a member of the editorial staff at Zoushui (Go with the Flow).

Zoushui, founded in 2022, is a local magazine written from the point of view of young Pinglin people. The editorial staff spend a lot of time interviewing elders and combing through historical documents.

Chung Chen-hung says: “Our community doesn’t have a long history, only about 200 years.” Our Han Chinese forebears started opening land to cultivation starting from the seacoast, turning to mountain areas like Pinglin only when the flatlands were fully settled. The Tamsui–Kavalan Trails, divided into northern, central, and southern routes, were the main transportation arteries from Tamsui to Yilan, with Pinglin being an important node on the southern route. Zoushui editor-in-chief Chan Pei-hsin says: “You can still see traces of early pioneering and clues to the past in Pinglin.”

Early settlers made a living mainly from forestry, growing rice, cutting down camphor trees, and sawing lumber. There are still stone houses on Old Street built of blocks cut from rocks taken from the Beishi River. Records indicate that Pinglin was once the biggest camphor center in Northern Taiwan, and Chung Chen-hung notes that one of the incense burners on the second floor of Baoping Temple is carved from a camphor tree burl, which is very rare indeed.

Hilly land is suited to tea cultivation, but early on Pinglin produced only a limited amount. In the Qing-Dynasty era, tea farmers had to carry their tea over the mountains to Shenkeng and then send it by river to dealers in Dadaocheng. In the era of Japanese rule, the Taipei–Yilan highway took embryonic form, and this route was used to bring the tea to Xindian, from where it was taken to Dadaocheng by pushcart railway.

Pinglin Old Street was a major center for tea storage, distribution, and transactions. Chung explains that Pinglin was settled in a very scattered way, and people from nearby villages came to the street to buy and sell goods.

Later, the commercial area along the more modern Taipei–Yilan Highway catered to travelers going back and forth between Taipei and Yilan. However, when the Xueshan Tunnel opened, completing the new freeway linking Taipei with Yilan, the commercial area went into decline. At this time, Pinglin Old Street remained tranquil, without the bustle of prosperity, but retaining a strong sense of daily life.

This incense burner in Baoping Temple is crafted from a camphor tree burl, bearing witness to the prominence of the camphor industry back in the day.

Pinglin Old Street has a strong ambience of everyday life about it.

Baoping Temple on Old Street is over 160 years old; it remains a center of faith for locals.

From golden age to succession

“Pinglin is famous for its tea, but in fact large-scale production didn’t begin until the 1970s and 1980s,” says Chan Pei-hsin. In the late 1960s, electrification reached all the villages of Pinglin, and only then did semi-mechanized tea processing begin. In the 1970s, as the market for Taiwanese tea shifted from foreign to domestic customers, Pinglin entered a “golden age,” and even today it is one of Northern Taiwan’s most important tea-producing areas.

“In the past, prices were high. My grandfather told me that back then you could get NT$10,000 for one Taiwanese catty [600 grams],” relates Chen Wei-hsien, director of the group Pinglin Young Tea Farmers.

However, because of the hardships of farming plus a declining birthrate, the tea industry’s glory days gradually faded. In fact, many elders discouraged their offspring from going into this line of work. But in Pinglin today, there are many second-generation tea farmers who have returned home to learn the skills of their parents. With youthful creativity, they are ensuring that the story of tea continues in their hometown.

Second-generation tea farmers who have taken over their parents’ tea farms have brought a youthful spirit of innovation and action to enable the story of tea in their hometown to continue into the future. (courtesy of Pinglin Young Tea Farmers)

The Pinglin Young Tea Farmers group organizes experiential activities, shares tea knowledge, and curates events in as many places as possible to let more people know about Pinglin tea culture. (courtesy of Pinglin Young Tea Farmers)

Forward-thinking young tea farmers

UChung, founded not long ago on Old Street, is a multifunctional tea space. In a conversation about their motives for returning home, both Chen Wei-hsien and “A Te,” chairman of the UChung Cooperative, mention that they wanted to succeed to their families’ artisanal skills and felt an unbreakable attachment to Pinglin. It was only after getting home that they discovered huge obstacles. Their fathers’ generation had conservative outlooks, whereas the youngsters wanted to try new things. For example, says A Te, global warming has accelerated tea growth, but his father still clung to the same harvesting schedule he had followed for decades. A Te felt it would be better to harvest earlier, because climate change was changing the thickness of the tea leaves, so naturally new methods needed to be adopted.

Faced with problems of this sort, young tea farmers got together to share their troubles and their experiences of producing tea. Chen Wei-hsien tells us that young farmers have been interested in understanding the reasons for using particular methods and have discussed them together, thereby learning very fast and often winning awards. They have done so despite being well aware that their fathers’ generation regarded each other as competitors and so naturally never shared information.

Young tea farmers also realized that if they operated in the same way as the older generation, they would soon fail. Therefore they formed Pinglin Young Tea Farmers to promote Pinglin tea culture and curate activities while engaging in exchanges with young tea farmers from all over to collectively fight for the tea industry. In 2023 the UChung Cooperative was established, along with the UChung tea brand.

The cooperative’s space, UChung, hosts activities such as food and agricultural education, tea processing DIY, and “shop owner for a day.” In these ways the cooperative shares knowledge about tea and puts tea growers in direct contact with consumers.

A Te declares: “We in this generation face more challenges, so we are always looking for answers. The cooperative is a means by which we seek possible paths forward. We hope that through organization we can find other sales channels or even engage in collective cultivation and production.”

The UChung multifunctional tea space is home base for UChung brand tea.

Chen Wei-hsien (left) and “A Te” (right) hope to use the collective power of the Pinglin Young Tea Farmers and the UChung Cooperative to create more possibilities for Pinglin’s tea industry.

The shelves in UChung display Paochong tea products in fashionable designer packaging. The younger generation are using fresh thinking to attract consumer attention.

Innovation transforms Pinglin

Wade Tsai, who came to Pinglin to research his thesis back in 2013, tried to integrate experiential design and services design into the locality. On a trial basis he arranged for young people to come here to work as volunteers in exchange for bed and board, to assist elderly local farmers with much-needed agricultural labor while experiencing farming life and gathering local stories. Through this process Tsai was inspired to think of several ways forward, including the design of experiential travel itineraries.

After finishing his thesis, Tsai chose to stay on in Pinglin. With his expertise in marketing and design he has transitioned from experiential activities to product design and found another way of quickly bringing people together: the dining table. His then girlfriend and now wife, Wu Shu-hsien, who came to Pinglin with him, followed her own interests to get involved in culinary activities and floral design, and they have continued to use food to promote interpersonal interactions. In 2019 they found an old stone house on Old Street where they opened Just Pinglin, a multifunctional space including dining and tea services.

Tsai also knows the local second-generation tea farmers. This group of peers who wanted to do something for their hometown all hung out together and came up with ideas, forming Pinglin Young Tea Farmers and inventing branding slogans such as “UChung: They Are on Their Way Back to Tea” and “New Tea Generation.”

Wade Tsai is writing a new chapter for the town at Just Pinglin, using food to link people together.

Wade Tsai, a native of Yunlin County, has found a place where he belongs in Pinglin; he has started a family and a career there.

Located in a renovated old house, Just Pinglin on Old Street is a node where cultural industries and nature are linked.

Going with the flow

Recording the stories of Pinglin is the mission of the Zoushui editorial team. Chung Chen-hung explains that they adopted the name Zoushui, which means “flowing water,” for their magazine for several reasons. First, Pinglin lies within the protected source water protection area for the Feitsui Reservoir, and their fieldwork takes them along its waterways. Second, zoushui, translated as “removing water,” is an important step in the tea manufacturing process, in which excess water is allowed to evaporate from the fresh leaves. Tea is only aromatic if evaporation is properly done. Third, a surprisingly large proportion of Pinglin’s population consists of young people who have returned home to make careers locally, bringing new energy, which accords with a more subtle meaning of “flowing water.”

Through historical documents and interviews with elders, the Zoushui team have been reconstructing the history of Pinglin. The periodical’s content focuses on everyday life in Pinglin, from techniques for making Paochong tea, to how residents co-exist with water, fun activities for the Beishi River such as to how to make fish traps, and important local rituals including the celebration of Lantern Festival and the Mazu procession.

Chan Pei-hsin and Chung Chen-hung often discuss conditions in Pinglin. For example, Chan tells us that the limits on development due to Pinglin’s location within the reservoir’s source water protection area have favored the preservation of Pinglin’s natural environment, which is now an asset for the green tourism industry.

Only if zoushui (evaporation, a step in tea processing) is done well will tea be fragrant. The editorial staff at Zoushui magazine uphold the spirit of zoushui in recording the stories of Pinglin word by word and sentence by sentence.

Pinglin still celebrates many events—including Lantern Festival, their Mazu pilgrimage, and the Zhongyuan pudu ritual—in distinctive local ways. (photo by Chung Chen-hung)

Chan Pei-hsin (left) and Chung Chen-hung (right) edit the periodical Zoushui. Through their words they reveal their ideas about local businesses, the environment, and culture.

A green, sustainable future

For the future, Wade Tsai envisions a sustainable green tea-growing area which by 2030 will incorporate a great deal of eco-friendly travel, dining, and tea. He hopes to drive business growth through sustainable green tourism, and he has recently made a new step forward by taking over management of the Pinglin Visitor Information Center.

Chan Pei-hsin says: “Pinglin is still in a developing stage, is still experimenting and innovating, but Zoushui has already had an effect in communicating Pinglin’s culture to the outside world.”

Second-generation tea farmers, meanwhile, have adopted the attitude of “craftspeople” or “artisans” in making their tea. They have persistently adhered to the spirit of regional revitalization, hoping that through a cooperative model they can stand on their own feet and create local opportunities for the future.

On this short Old Street, many novel ideas are germinating, and like the tender leaf buds on a tea bush, they have unlimited possibilities.