Taiwanese tea
teas from Taiwan
Taiwanese tea includes four main types: oolong tea, black tea, green tea and white tea. The earliest record of tea trees found in Taiwan is from 1717 in Shui Sha Lian (水沙連), present-day Yuchi and Puli, Nantou County. Some of the teas retain the island country's former name, Formosa.
Oolongs grown in Taiwan account for about 20% of world production.
History
According to Lian Heng's General History of Taiwan, in the late 18th century, Ke Chao (柯朝) brought some tea trees from Fujian into Taiwan and planted them in Jieyukeng (櫛魚坑), in the area of modern-day Ruifang District, New Taipei City. However, transaction records indicate that tea business in Muzha area started as early as late 18th century. These records indicate that tea has been sold in Taiwan for more than two centuries.
In 1855, Lin Fengchi (林鳳池) brought the Qingxin oolong (青心烏龍) plants from the Wuyi Mountains of Fujian to Taiwan and planted them in Dongding Village (Lugu, Nantou County). This is said to be the origin of Tung-ting tea.
After the Treaty of Tientsin was ratified in 1860 and the port of Tamsui was opened for trade, Scottish entrepreneur John Dodd began working with tea merchants and farmers to promote Taiwanese tea, slowly developing it as an export item.
“Taiwanese tea” enters the record as teas from Taiwan. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Taiwanese, teas and Taiwan can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10915378. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1717, 1855 and 1860.
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This entry incorporates text from “Taiwanese tea” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.