Taiwanese Tea Master Tony Chan

I will admit I’ve never really been a fan of tea. Every time I’ve tried it, I felt it tasted like grass in hot water which caused my face to shrivel into an embarrassing “yucky” look which is best not seen in public. However, since I’ve been dating Cocoa Ho from Hong Kong, I’ve been coerced into trying many different kinds of tea and actually found several that I like more than coffee.

As a part of my tea education, while visiting souther Taiwan we made a trip out to see one of Cocoa’s tea master, Tony Chan. We were waiting under the shade of a big tree near the bus station when Tony drove up in a mini-van to take us to his studio. First, I’ll say I’ve never seen a mini-van quite like his Taiwanese built Luxgen brand. The dash on it might as well have been from a future car. It had exterior cameras for all angles which displayed on a 14 inch LCD monitor built into the dash. Every time he came close to the dashed line in the middle of the road, or the solid line on the edge, the computer would bleep out warnings for him to wake up and stay on the road. When not doing safety monitoring or displaying views from external cameras, it was playing MTV videos with music pumping through the sound system where I heard the latest hip-hop musicians singing lyrics in Taiwanese.

We arrived at his studio and he explained that just a couple months prior the landlord of his large studio decided to sell the building and he was forced out. As a result, Tony decided to build his own massive Tea House customized to his needs. The new building is expected to be finished in 2014. Until that time, Tony is working out of a smaller temporary studio.

Tea Master Tony Chan is world renown for his knowledge of tea. He is also a dealer buying and selling exotic teas and tea related items (like ancient tea pots and cups). His company is called Sanhetang known for his Daughters Tea. Daughters Tea is based on a famous Chinese story. Apparently there once was a princess who was given a special type of tea as a part of her dowry. There was a hidden meaning in the Chinese character on the packaging wishing the newly wed couple happiness and a fruitful sex life. This same tea is sold today by his company.

Master Tony Chan once had some of his tea auctioned for over $100,000 USA ($3,000,000 Taiwanese) and has auctioned off dozens of ancient tea pots dating back over 300 to 400 years. He also owns a tea plantation in south China which grows some of the rarest teas in the world. Needless to say, I was impressed both by his credentials, but also by his open and down to earth personality.

Because Tony speaks very little English, it fell to Cocoa to translate the entire afternoons instruction from Mandarin to English. During the next three hours, Tony prepared and served four different exotic teas and explained their backgrounds. He started with a fresh green Pu-er tea from 2012 and gradually worked over to aged fermented teas which are his specialty. It’s also my first time to try aged teas which are very different than fresh teas. We tried two types of Oolong teas aged for 20 years. Between sets of tea, Tony put on a DVD of tea related videos and one about a famous calligrapher friend of his who created a giant calligraphy art piece hanging on the wall behind Tony. Basically I learned that if you want to do really amazing calligraphy, it is best done when you are almost falling down drunk.

Here are some of the basics I learned from Tony:

1. Tony poured the hot tea into a smaller vase shaped container for us to breath in the aroma. He also recommended we breath out through the nose into the container which caused the humid fumes to be pushed further into our noses.
2. After breathing the aroma several times you were to pour a single serving from the small container into your tea cup (Chinese tea cups don’t have handles).
3. Take a deep whiff of the aroma immediately before a sip.
4. Breath the tea aroma directly after drinking.