The Hardest Worker
Meet
Mrs. Su, Shu Jen, one of the hardest working tea growers I know.
She is the daughter
of 3 generations of tea farmers and married to Mr.
Su, grandson of one of the founders of Tung
Ting Village. When tea was
first found to grow well in Taiwan, Tung Ting Mountain was deemed
extremely suitable. The villagers are extended family members and help
each other harvest, process teas, working together as one unit. Mrs. Su
is one of the exceptions among tea processors, for women usually hand
pick the leaves and the men handle the finishing. Processing tea is
meticulous and difficult, requiring great skill and experience, as well
as much strength and endurance. Mrs. Su married Mr. Su around 16 or 17
years, but her husband left to the mainland China to develop a market
for Taiwan Oolongs. Oolongs originated in China, but during the dark
years of cultural oblation, little advances were made to the
cultivation and care of tea. The Taiwanese however, thrived and refined
technique and machinery, setting up research centers and farmers'
cooperatives to study better varietals and accentuate that signature
Taiwan tea fragrance. The results are lighter, floral, and intensely
rich and very sweet complex oolongs. These greener Oolongs were prized
by Oolong connoisseurs around the world, and when the Taiwanese
businessmen travelled to China in the early 1990s to do business for
the first time, they brought their preferences to the mainland. The
mainlanders quickly found it fashionable, and new techniques of making
more fragrant and lighter oolongs were sought. That is the reason Mrs.
Su took up tea processing in addition to harvesting, and raising 3 boys
on her own, to support her husband's venture, providing him with the
great Taiwan Oolongs for the China market. In addition to her tea
processing work, she selects and tends the charcoal pieces for her
roasting, ages her dowry Oolongs (since the day she was married),
gives tours to visitors to the mountain, and of course fret over her
sons. "Just bring yourself", she always says when I visit, "I'll
go collect some fresh bamboo shoots to make soup for you. But my boys
would sure like some chocolates!"
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