Taipei and I'm glad for that. At least this area gets nice and cool at night. Little Jack played his guitar last night and he was awesome. I hope he does it again in Shitou, maybe a campfire?? Teresa also played and sung a song for us too! Great night :)
Our day started off with a tour of the Phoenix Tea Plantation. despite just growing tea, there were alot of trees called Sakura, a tree from the Japanese. It's leaves have a reddish color. This plantation area also happened to grow coffee as well.
Next and my favorite part of the day was learning about the Art of Brewing Tea. For those of you who don't know, I usually don't like tea. It's flavor is very unappealing to me, but this tea was DELICIOUS! I think I like fresh tea leaves over any artificial tea, or perhaps the tea that I have tried back in the states has a different taste acquired for Westerners. The staff was very helpful and graceful in their tea practice and the master was very knowledgeable and proud of his tea production. At one point during the lecture the whole entire staff was conversing in Chinese and all the teachers were trying to explain in English the long and complicated process. Heng-An performed the first round of the tea practice and she did it masterfully. She told me that when she was little her parents would take her to the tea gardens and drink tea. Today in the modern Chinese culture it is very rare to actually sit down and drink tea like this because it is too time consuming, but may I say very relaxing and peaceful. Definitely worth it :) Instead it is very common to buy the tea leaves and just put it in hot water. The most interesting part of this though was the very specific brewing time. I can't in the slightlist bit recall the time duration for each brewing session. In the whole ceremony it important to know the quantity of tea leaves, water temperature and brewing time to correctly master the art. I also learned that tea can be classified into three categories. Non-fermented, partially fermented, and fully fermented. Although I"m not quite sure about the whole tea process due to translation difficulties, fermentation in this context means oxidation. After all this fun, Robin, Alicia and I really wanted to know where we could purchase some of this tea and possibly a set. Jack was kind enough to even stop by a store so we could look but unfortunately I didn't see any that suited my taste. Perhaps once we are back in Taipei I will head to a night market and look around.
Complete Tea Set
Robin, Carolyn and Heng-An
Lastly we traveled to Bamboola Taiwan: bamboo products and marketing. This company made amazing products that were like puzzles to figure out how to open. They even made an iphone 3 case, but unfortunately the iphone 4 won't be available until later on this year. Everything was made out of bamboo and because the quality was so nice it was very expensive.
This one had a hidden lock inside the hole
At last we arrived at the Sitou Experimental Forest and will be staying here for five nights. This is my greatest fear because not only does this mean the program is ending, it also means we will all have to face our projects. I hope my group can find an interesting topic and conduct enough research in two days.
My impression of this forest was not what I expected. In my mind I thought this area would be secluded but instead its very much like a tourist attraction. I was very taken back by this. Not to mention I also learned that all the trees in the lower elevation area are artificially planted! What??? This is because the Japanese at the time only knew how to grow only one tree very well and so they planted it in this area. Definitely not what I had in mind.
Nicer rooms tonight but no air conditioner again. Its really nice and cool here too, so I think it won't bother me too much. I don't think that I will ever complain about sweating in Texas anymore once I come back from Taiwan :) Side note for those who may read this in the future. Bring luggage with wheels! My bag has grown substantially and you have to walk up alot of stairs to get to your room.
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