Baojong Tea Festival
We recently attended the 2008 Baojong Tea Festival in Pinling, Taipei County. This year’s show wasn’t as big as last year’s but the events were spread out over two weekends. We ended only staying for an hour or so, and then going for a drive in the hills west of Pinling afterwards.
The main point of the festival is to showcase the area’s famous Baojong teas and promote tourism in the
area.
Many local tea farms were represented, and we had a chance to try a lot of different Baojongs.
I didn’t find any that really excited me (at least not to the point of buying), but we did try an interesting Bai Hao Oolong (White Tip Oolong is the usual English name). 
We met a former classmate of mine from the Lu Yu tea school in Taipei, who said they were going to do a tea presentation. We waited around for over an hour, but they didn’t seem to be setting up for it
anywhere, and we ended up leaving before it came on. Instead, we were treated to some ‘Tea Dances’ by the local ‘Mei Nu’ (means beautiful girls) tea picking girls. I started to get very excited, but then realized that they meant the mothers of the beautiful tea picking girls. Oh well.
The best thing about going there was a chance to stock up on tea snacks. Two of my favorites are moji – a kind of chewy rice flour snack with a variety of fillings. Another is tea nougat candies with peanuts. We stopped at one of the local tea shops to pick up a few bags.
Here’s a picture of their tea sampling table as well. Most tea shops in Taiwan will let you come in and sample the teas before you buy, so you can make sure you’re getting what you want.
