膨風茶 (芒種–大暑)
Jun 5 – Jul 23
Solar terms 芒種 to 大暑; dates are inference from those terms. Core window about ten days around the Dragon Boat Festival.
北埔乡北埔鄉
Beipu
Hakka hill township in Hsinchu, where Oriental Beauty is called 膨風茶 ('bragging tea'); leafhopper-bitten summer leaf, heavily oxidised.
- Level
- Areatownship (鄉)
- Within
- Taiwan › Hsinchu County
At a glance#
Where it lies#
Tea places nearby, plotted by their coordinates. Only physical positions are shown, no boundaries.
1811 places shown Across the view · 349 km
44 places shown Across the view · 42 km
Picking calendar#
Terroir#
- Slope and light
- Typhoon-season floods cause soil erosion on the hill farms; garden elevation not sourced.
Cultivation#
- Cultivars grown
- Qingxin DapangQingxin Wulong白毛猴慢種Jinxuan台茶15號台茶17號
- Practice
- No insecticide, so leafhoppers feed on the shoots; heavy oxidation (about 60% per TRES; 75–85% by local makers).
Local words#
| Local words | Dialect | |
|---|---|---|
| 膨風茶 pong fungˊ caˇ | Hakka | 'bragging tea' = Oriental Beauty; Sixian accent, Taiwan Hakka Pinyin (tones 55-24-11) |
| 膨風茶 pongˇ fungˋ ca | Hakka | 'bragging tea'; Hailu accent, Taiwan Hakka Pinyin (tones 11-53-55); the Hailu entry also lists 著蜒茶 as a synonym |
People#
- Hakka 客家人
- About 93% (Hakka Affairs Council 2017 survey, via Wikipedia) to 95% of residents.
Other names and written forms 2#
Translations and trade names
- Beipu Township
- Peipu
Names and ambiguities#
Notes#
Oriental Beauty (東方美人, 白毫烏龍, 膨風茶 / 椪風茶) is made from shoots bitten by the tea green leafhopper (小綠葉蟬, Jacobiasca formosana); the insect damage triggers the honey and ripe-fruit aroma, so gardens must go unsprayed. It is picked in early summer, between the solar terms 芒種 and 大暑 (June–July), with the core window about ten days around the Dragon Boat Festival. TRES gives about 60% oxidation; Hsinchu and Miaoli makers are said to go to 75–85%. The finished leaf shows five colours (white tips, green, yellow, red, brown). Cultivars named: 青心大冇, 青心烏龍 (rated best), 白毛猴, 慢種, 台茶12號, 台茶15號, 台茶17號.
Names: in Beipu it is 膨風茶 / 椪風茶; the 'bragging' story says a farmer whose crop was insect-damaged sold it to foreign buyers in the city at a surprising price, and neighbours called him a braggart. Older export name 番庄烏龍 came from the 番庄館 refiners of Dadaocheng. The tale that Queen Victoria (or, in another version, Elizabeth II around 1960) named it 'Oriental Beauty' is a legend with no documentary support; the MOE Hakka dictionary's own example sentence frames it as hearsay. Beipu is about 93–95% Hakka.