Yingge

As part of one of my classes we traveled to Yingge (Spoken as Ingge). Yingge has a famous old street. But we traveled there to learn more about tea culture by trying some tea at a local tea shop.

Trains

I needed to take this picture of this cute animation whilst the train drives. This is a local train.

茶

(That' the traditional chinese sign for tea ('chá' in Pingying)) I am not a person who drinks tea. I drink coffee (咖啡 'kā fēi' in Pingying). But the tea we tried was very nice. I especially liked a white tea they were serving. My mother really likes black tea, so I bought one for her.

What I found really intresting was, that the tea comes in discs, and not in bags. The tea gets pressed into 200g discs, which are wrapped in a paper and then sealed in plasitcs. The art on the outside is really beautiful as well. The tea leaves can be used multiple times (up to ten times apparently), not just one time. Another thing I lerned is that black tea and green tea are made from the same type of plant. I always assumed that black and green tea would be made from very different plants, like apples and oranges are from differnt trees. But no, they are from the same tree. A misconception I had apart from that, is that I've only ever seen the small tea bushes. I didnt know that tea actually grows on trees, and that there is tea harvested from trees that are 4 meters high. The tea from the higer trees is more expensive, as it can't be harvested very often, whereas tea from bushes can be harvested up to 4 times a year! (For the high trees it's one time.)

The course was in english, but still I'm not sure if I understood everything correctly, especially the parts about how green tea becomes black (or cyan or white or yellow) tea. As far as if understood, it has something to do with the drying process.

We tried many dofferent teas, for instance we tried an Oolong Tea from Taiwan as well as black, white, green and cyan tea from China. Before this class I didn't really know that there was other colors of tea besides black and green.

Old street

The weather was quite bad (cold and rainy), so we didn't see much of the old street beauty that we were promised. I would like to go again in nicer weather. Yinge is also home to a very nice museum. Because I had to go home, I could sadly only see the outside, it is very nice to look at. There is also a pathway with stained glass in the roof, which looks awesome in the sun. Sadly it was raining nearly the whole time. The pathway is leading from the muesum to the train station. The title image is mug and teapot shaped waffles. Most tourist spots in Taiwan tend to have waffles in fun shapes, and they taste great!

Conclusion

I learned a lot and also had a lot of fun in this class. Yingge old street seemed quite charming, even in the rain. So I would like to go again