Gender equality reaches deep into the mountains of Shenkeng as veteran tea masters guide the fun of tea-making

 

 

Traditionally, tea picking is mostly done by women, while tea masters are mainly men. To break the gender stereotypes of the industry, the Social Affairs Bureau of the New Taipei City Government, together with the Shenkeng District Office, held "Tea Mountain Daughters' Tea-Making Fun" at the Paozilun Farmers' Market, where men can go into the mountains to pick tea, and women can even learn to make tea, brew tea, and even use these skills to obtain a tea master certification or learn the tea ceremony, transforming their economic strength and adding joy to life.

 

Tsai Chin-lai, 66 years old this year and head of the production and marketing team of the Shenkeng Farmers' Association, served as the instructor for the tea-making fun event. He said that for as long as he can remember, he played with his mother in the hillside tea gardens, sometimes helping pick tea, and after growing up he learned tea-making from a master. Tsai Chin-lai said that Wenshan Baozhong tea is strip-shaped, unlike oolong tea which is ball-shaped. The old masters said that after the tea leaves are withered in sunlight and pan-fired, rolling them into strips rather than balls allows better fermentation, and the taste and flavor are also more fragrant.

 

Tsai Chin-lai grows 2 fen of tea garden locally, and the Baozhong tea he produces has won the special prize and first prize multiple times from the Taipei County Farmers' Association. With a head of white hair, Mother Tsai is 90 years old this year. Although her face is weathered, she is still nimble when she picks up her tea basket and goes down to the garden. When teaching the environmental volunteers of the Arou Community Development Association and the social welfare volunteers of the district office how to pick tea, she taught them to gently pluck one bud and two leaves with the thumb and index finger, which is the basic skill for picking good tea and making good tea.

 

Shenkeng District Chief Huang Mei-hua said that tea is one of the four treasures of Shenkeng, along with tofu, black-haired pigs, and bamboo shoots. Shenkeng District has 10.12 hectares of tea planting area, with an annual tea output of 6.58 metric tons. Because tea-making requires a lot of physical strength, it has traditionally been mostly done by men. Under the promotion of gender equality policies by the city government and the district office, of the 24 tea makers in the district, 6 are now women, showing some results.

 

Lin Kun-tsung, a specialist commissioner of the Social Affairs Bureau, said that Article 14 of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) addresses the special problems faced by rural women and family livelihoods, and appropriate measures should be taken, such as through study and training, so that women can develop and benefit. Therefore, through this event, it is hoped that more women can experience the fun of picking tea, making tea, and brewing tea, and even join the ranks of tea-making work, dispelling the mistaken impression that traditional tea-making is "passed to sons but not to daughters," so that women friends can all achieve appropriate development.