
Pao Te, said one of the roasters as he handed us a hand full of mao cha, primary finished oolong tea. 'Pao' meant to steep, 'te' meant tea. Pretty much all the tea people spoke Minnan Hua, the Fujian dialect from where tea originally was introduced to Taiwan. It was like a capsule of history. That's where the word 'tea' came from when it arrived into the West in the 1600s; the Dutch said it was 'te' that they brought over..... My cousin misheard and thought he said 'Pao Nu', which meant, in Mandarin, go find a girl. Everyone laughed and that was their entertainment for the day! But it's difficult. There are 9-13 indigenous tribes in Taiwan, not to mention the Hakka tribe and the subsequent Fujian tribes that arrived, then it was occupied by the Dutch, then it was the Japanese, and then the Kuo Min Tang took over in 1949.
At 1700 meters in a cold intensely foggy day, the freshly harvested leaves were wilted in a semi-outdoor rooftop at San Lin She . Even if there is no sun and the conditions were not right, still, one has to adapt. The tea processors do not sleep for days on end, and sometimes for a month. Each day, they process the leaves that come in from the harvesters until 4am, catch a nap, and start again at 7am or so and non-stop until the next day.
Drinking the High Mountain tea at the High Mountain with the mountain water, the fog, the chill, and the friendly tea people makes one pretty high. That's how you end up hearing go steep some tea to go find a girl!