What it is
Old-style black tea (古早味紅茶, literally "old-time flavour black tea") is a cheap, sweet black tea, usually served cold. Some old stands sweeten it with sugar syrup cooked to a caramel colour and shake it with ice until it foams. The flavour of many commercial versions comes from black tea blended with barley, cassia seed (決明子) and vanilla powder.
Where it came from
Taiwan's black tea industry began under Japanese rule, when Assam tea plants were brought in from India; Taiwan's representative to India, Chen Mu-min (陳牧民), dates their arrival to 1925. In 1926 Arai Kōkichirō (新井耕吉郎) was sent from Japan to help pick trial sites. Yuchi (魚池), near Sun Moon Lake in Nantou, became the centre, and a black tea research station opened there in 1936. By 1939, one food column says, Yuchi supplied about 90 per cent of Taiwan's export black tea. In the 1960s rising labour costs made Taiwanese black tea uncompetitive abroad, and many growers abandoned their gardens for betel nut.
The sweet street version has deep roots in Tainan. Shuang Chuan (雙全紅茶) began as a stand at the mouth of a lane in 1949. Its founder had learned to use a cocktail shaker at a Japanese-run restaurant. The food writer Yeh Yi-lan (葉怡蘭), who grew up in Tainan, calls the city a widely accepted early home of foam black tea (泡沫紅茶) and bubble tea, which swept Taiwan from the 1980s.
How it is made
Stands brew strong black tea and sweeten it heavily, since enough sugar masks the tea's astringency. Shuang Chuan cooks its syrup until it turns caramel brown, lets the tea cool, then shakes each cup with ice until it foams. Most foam-tea shops instead pour hot tea over ice and shake it to chill it fast.
How to eat it
A cheap drink for hot days, bought by the cup from a stand. Lunchbox shops often leave it out as a free drink, and in Tainan fish soup and noodle shops sell it to go with the meal. Stands may let you pick cold, warm or hot and the level of sweetness, and some also sell milk tea.
Around Taiwan
- Tainan
- Tainan keeps many old tea stands. Shuang Chuan, open since 1949, cools its tea before shaking each cup to order. Fish soup shops such as Chuan Tai Hao (川泰號) pour a cup to drink after the meal.
- Kaohsiung
- In Yancheng, Black Tea Grandma (紅茶阿嬤), a cart on Dayi Street since 1959, sells black tea and milk tea at fixed sweetness, alongside winter melon, roselle and grass teas.
- Central
- Yuchi, in Nantou near Sun Moon Lake, is where the Japanese built up Taiwan's black tea industry. Shuang Chuan in Tainan still uses black tea from Yuchi.
