Making for Maokong

This morning, I set out for a district in the southern region of Taipei, Maokong. At one time, Maokong consisted primarily of tea plantations. It still has plantations, but they’ve since added infrastructure to entice tourists, such as walking trails, treehouses, and a Tea Promotion Centre.

Maokong Gondola

Getting to Maokong from my hotel is not a quick trip. It involved:

1. Walking about 15 minutes to a stop on the blue line of the Taipei metro,
2. Travelling two stops on the blue line to a connection station with the brown line,
3. Taking an escalator up to the brown line,
4. Riding nine stops on the brown line to its last station, the Taipei Zoo,
5. Walking five minutes to the Taipei Zoo station of the Maokong gondola line,
6. Taking escalators up to the fourth floor of the building that is the Taipei Zoo station of the Maokong gondola, and then,
7. Riding the Maokong gondola to the Maokong station.

Just getting to the Taipei Zoo gondola stop took about 50 minutes. The gondola ride added another half hour.

My walking tour app doesn’t recommend any sights in Maokong, but it does recommend the Maokong gondola and it suggests indulging in some tea when you get off at the Maokong station before paying again to return. It didn’t phrase it this way, but I kind of had the sense that its tea recommendation was sort of along the lines of, “Since you’re there anyway, you might as well have some tea.”

My guidebook recommends some sights in Maokong, but it also recommends the gondola as something to do on its own. So I was certainly going to ride the gondola, but since I was there anyway, I decided to take in some of the sights my guidebook recommended.

As you might have surmised from the need to go to the fourth floor of a building, this is not the sort of gondola that gondoliers use to punt besotted tourists through the canals of Venice. They’re pods suspended from and pulled by a thick cable well above the ground, like a ski lift.

To get to the Maokong station from its zoo station, the gondola travels over a few heavily forested mountain ridges, the first of which is more like a high hill and dips down somewhat in the intervening valleys.

There are two intermediate stops, one at a second zoo entrance and the other at a temple. However, calling any of them stops is something of a misnomer. The cabs never come to a complete stop.

At one point, between the second zoo station and the temple station, the gondola makes a ninety-degree turn toward its final destination. I guess they weren’t able to place the mountains where they wanted them.

A little before I reached my embarkation station, an, I won’t call it rain, but more of a mist, started. It wasn’t heavy, but heavy enough that the mist on the gondola cab windows merged into water droplets. They didn’t obscure my view much, but they made picture-taking out of the already slightly tinted windows useless. So I didn’t take any from the gondola.

But the views were spectacular nonetheless. I rode over lush green trees, with mountains beside, behind, in front, and sometimes below me. However, the gondola cab did not have a glass floor, so I didn’t have the latter view.

I’m not complaining. A glass floor would have caused my heart to explode. I haven’t seen any reputable, peer-reviewed medical studies, so I might be wrong, but I think an exploding heart is widely believed to have a detrimental longevity outcome.

At Maokong

When I was up at Maokong, the highest station on the gondola line, the mist had turned heavier. While walking around, there were times when it turned to drizzle. I wasn’t prepared for that.

Before leaving the hotel this morning, I checked the weather forecast for Taipei. A few hours in the forecast had a forty percent chance of rain, but none had more than that. And no hour was predicted to get more than 0.1mm of rain. I figured I’d chance it without my umbrella. But I did have the sense to take my light rain jacket, so I didn’t melt.

Despite the drizzle and mist, the views from Maokong were stunning. Or maybe it wasn’t “despite.” Perhaps the looming mist added an enchanting, haunting quality to the beauty. (If you’re unfamiliar with the term “rationalization,” the previous sentences in this paragraph provide an example of it.)

The Tea Promotion Centre is about a 20-minute walk from the Maokong gondola station. The walk is along a mountain road with beautiful scenery, and the occasional lookout with views into the valley below and the mountain across from it. I also passed a couple of small tea plantation plots.

In addition, on the way, I passed a temple (Google Maps told me it was Tian’en Temple) that was attractive from the outside, but kind of plain inside. However, there was one aspect I greatly liked. At the altar was a big light-yellow Buddha with the biggest, happiest possible smile. I took a zoomed-in picture of it and placed it on this page. Unfortunately, the Buddha is behind glass, and there’s a huge, overwhelming square reflection of the outside obscuring his big belly. But you can still see the smile.

The Tea Promotion Centre is a pretty, brown-brick building with handsome, understated angles and curves.

Inside, there were two areas for casual visitors. (It is also a tea research and educational centre, hence the distinguishing, by me, of casual visitors.) In one area, there were some machines used in the processing of tea leaves into tea ready for brewing.

The same room had a video screen mounted on a wall and a long table with its short end facing the screen. Chairs sat on each side of the table, facing the table. So if you wanted to watch the video, you had to either crick your neck or turn your chair ninety degrees toward the screen. I turned my chair.

I was the only visitor in the room. The video wasn’t playing when I entered. The attendant at the centre said he’d switch it to English and he started the 15-minute video for me.

There is an English version of the video and a Chinese version. The English version had English audio narration with English subtitles. I assume the Chinese version has Chinese audio and subtitles. Because I was the only one there, choosing which language to use did not cause an international incident.

The video told a lot about Maokong. It explained the area’s multiple microclimates and their benefits for tea growing. The video mentioned Maokong’s mistiness a couple of times.

Ah, microclimates. I checked the Taipei weather this morning. The microclimates might explain why the forecast I looked at wasn’t spot-on for Maokong. Of course, that doesn’t explain all of the other times meteorologists have gotten things wrong.

And the typical mistiness would explain the, um, mistiness I experienced this morning.

The other room has a tea-tasting table with four tasting seats set up. A couple were in the midst of tasting three teas. They and the server were speaking Chinese. I don’t think the server spoke any English.

When I arrived, she poured me a small cup of the tea the couple was tasting. She then put a laminated sheet with English descriptions of the three teas they were tasting, and she pointed to one of the three descriptions and then pointed to my cup. After the couple and I finished that tea, she moved on to the next tea and repeated those motions. Not an English word was spoken. However, she carried on the conversation in Chinese with the couple. The teas were very good, but I didn’t stick around to try the tea I had missed.

I mentioned earlier that there are some walking trails in Maokong. According to a map at the centre, two circular routes start at the centre. They both start and end at the same point. The shorter one turns off and doubles back sooner. The map said the longer of the routes would take about two hours. It didn’t specify a time for the shorter loop, but it looked less than half of the longer one. It was still misting, and I’m not getting any younger, so I decided on the shorter one.

Despite supposedly starting at the centre, I couldn’t find them. There is a nice little yard out back of the centre, with what looked like a trail starting on the other side of it. But the English words on a sign on the gate into the yard said “Staff Only.”

I found the attendant at the centre and asked him about the trails. His English wasn’t great, but he knew enough to understand what I was asking and responded, “Only open on Sundays.” Today is Tuesday.

Oh, well. It was getting close to lunchtime anyway. My guidebook recommended a teahouse that also serves meals. It’s just a five- or six-minute walk farther along the road from the tea centre. I decided that lunch was a wise choice and headed there.

Lunch

My guidebook said the teahouse is open 24 hours a day. And a few signs by the teahouse also said “24H.”

It sounds like I’m teeing (pun intended) you up for another “because I was there, it was closed” experience.

That’s not it at all. It was open. But that made me wonder, what would cause anyone to want to go to the top of a mountain at, say, two o’clock in the morning, where the only things around are a few other teahouses and a Tea Appreciation Centre that are closed at that time, and a very small number of residences, just so they can have some tea and maybe a nosh?

And do the people who run and perhaps own the place live there? And if so, do you have to wake them up if you want service in the middle of the night? I don’t get it.

The person who was near the entrance to the teahouse when I arrived spoke little English. I mentioned I wanted something to eat. She didn’t understand. I mimed eating. She mimed eating to confirm that I wanted to eat. I shook my head yes.

She showed me to a table, put three different menus in front of me, put a piece of paper with my table number and empty spaces to write in numbers, and then did some pointing and miming to let me know I was to fill in the numbers on the menu of the items I wanted (the menu had English translations), and then take the paper up to the front and pay.

I mentioned above that it was a teahouse. The teas intimidated me. The menu listed many teas. It also had a two-page spread with text in Chinese and English telling me and pictures showing me how to make the tea. My table and the few others in the section I was in all had small, circular hotplates on the tables. At the tables that were occupied before I got there, they already had pots of tea going on the hotplates.

Not only did the number of teas intimidate me—how the heck do you choose—but the price did too. All of the teas were more expensive than most of the meals. Beside each of the tea offerings, the menu listed the number of grams of tea leaves you’d get. There was a separate charge for the water needed to make the tea if you wanted to drink it there. The menu said that if you brought your own tea, the charge for water was higher.

I was overwhelmed. I wrote down the number for Kung Pao chicken and took my order to the front. The person at the cash spoke more English. I asked her if it was possible to get just a cup of tea. She responded, “No. No single cups.” Then she pointed to the cylindrical tins of tea behind her and said that I could take the rest of the tea home.

It was all too much for me. I was supposed to pay not a small amount of money for a tea I might end up hating and then take the rest of it back to Toronto with me. I passed and just had the Kung Pao chicken.

I’ve had the North American version of Kung Pao chicken and usually like it. This was much better. The sauce was tastier and the chicken was meatier. When I’ve had it in North America, it’s generally somewhat spicy. This was spicier. There were plenty of diced chilli peppers throughout. It was hot—my nose started running shortly after I began eating and continued until I finished—but I had no problem bearing its heat.

The dining area I was in was fully covered, but the side away from the mountain was open except for a low wall. I ate while looking at a splendid view of the surrounding vegetation. And while I was waiting for my meal, I briefly had a new feline friend join me on the railing beside my table. It was a great way to cap off the morning. If I weren’t so daunted by the teas, my cup would have runneth over.