By MOOK Scenic Spots Editorial Team, compiled and reported
Drinking tea on Maokong has become a familiar tea-tasting experience for many Taipei residents and a popular choice for outdoor excursions on holidays. With the Mid-Autumn Festival approaching, the Zhinan Li Office in Wenshan District is hosting a Mid-Autumn hiking event on September 22, planning a composite itinerary that combines tea tasting, charcoal making, and mountain bonding to uncover the renowned tea countryside scenery of Maokong.
(Photo/Taipei City Government, the same below)
Maokong’s profound tea culture heritage blends elements of early rural settlements, restoring relics such as the aromatic charcoal kilns for making love wood charcoal and quaint pigsties filled with the fragrance of tea. It also features the uniquely distinctive Maokong soil and water conservation tea garden. Moreover, Maokong’s value lies not only in its static tea farming culture. The camphor tree and Zhanghu circular trail, starting from the Maokong Cable Car Station, extends to explore the local cultural and landscape vistas.
Maokong boasts a long history of tea production and processing, and is a well-known tea-producing township in northern Taiwan. Among them, Tieguanyin tea, regarded as the treasure of Muzha, was introduced and planted by brothers Zhang ? Miao and Zhang ? Gan from Anxi County, Fujian Province during the Japanese colonial period. Thanks to the unique soil and environment of the Maokong area, Muzha Tieguanyin quickly gained fame.
In the past, when industrial roads had not yet been developed, tea farmers relied on the “ancient tea trail,” now the Sanxuan Temple Trail next to the Maokong Cable Car Station, to carry tea down the mountain for trade. Walking into this lush and verdant forest path, stretching out your hands is like embracing the mountains. Along the trail, there are old stone tablets and tombs that record the hardships of the pioneers and traces of the once-thriving tea industry, sketching out Maokong’s unique historical charm.
The Mid-Autumn hiking event will invite Mr. Zhang Zhenlong from the Zhanghu Cultural History Workshop to provide guided tours and explanations on Maokong’s humanistic history and rural settlements. Following in the footsteps of our predecessors along the Sanxuan Temple Trail, you’ll soon find yourself amidst the tea fields in the mountains, taking in the beautiful valley scenery of Maokong. Descending further, you’ll arrive at the Maokong Soil and Water Conservation Tea Garden, designed for tea tasting, leisure, and soil conservation. By constructing tea garden trails that connect old paths and restoring farm ponds with water storage and irrigation functions, barren land is transformed into productive and educational farmland.
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