Women of Taiwan’s Tea Industry: From Farm to Factory

The story of Taiwan’s tea is, at heart, also a story of women’s work.

When Taiwan’s tea exports took off in the mid-1800s – especially after the port of Tamsui opened in 1860 – the island’s hillsides transformed almost overnight. Tea fields spread fast, and new factories appeared to process the harvest. This boom was hungry for labour, drawing thousands of women out of purely domestic roles for the first time.

Tea fields quickly became sites of change. As tea historian Huang Fu-shan notes in The History of Taiwan’s Tea Industry, the rapid expansion of the trade in the late nineteenth century “encouraged Taiwanese women to enter the formal workforce – one of the earliest recorded instances of paid employment for women in Taiwan.” In practice, this meant that rural women, who had long helped on family farms, began taking on seasonal tea-picking work and, over time, moved into the sorting sheds and small factories that sprang up around the island’s booming tea towns.

According to the Taiwan Women’s Centre, “At that time, tea pickers – the pioneers of women’s occupations – emerged.” These early tea workers earned cash wages that supported their families and gave them new standing at home – a remarkable shift in a society still shaped by traditional Confucian gender roles, where women were expected to obey fathers, husbands, and sons, and remain largely confined to household duties.

By the 1920s, wider social reforms – such as ending foot-binding and encouraging girls’ education – coincided with women taking jobs more freely. One cultural history of Taipei’s Dadaocheng tea market observes that “the daily earnings these women made not only helped with family expenses but gave women once regarded as surplus labour a real voice in the household.” In a city where tea once drove the economy, it’s said that as many as 20,000 women worked as tea sorters on busy days.

In short, Taiwan’s tea rush didn’t just fill export ships – it transformed lives, giving women unprecedented opportunities for paid work and personal independence.

Tea Sorting and Traditional Workspaces

Before tea reached the factories, it began in the fields. Taiwan’s tea farms were small, often family-run plots tucked into hilly terrain – places like Pinglin and Maokong, where the mist still hangs over the terraces. Many of these traditional farms still exist today, passed down through generations.

After the harvest, the raw tea (毛茶) had to be cleaned and graded by hand. Sorting was slow, meticulous work – perfect, people thought, for the delicate touch of women’s fingers.

In Taipei’s Dadaocheng district, tea factories were often built into shophouses. The ground floor buzzed with trade, the second floor was for sorting, and the family lived upstairs. At the historic Sin Hong Choon Tea House (now a museum), the ground floor once served as a bustling storefront, while the second floor rang with the steady rustle of women sorting leaves. Similarly, Wang Tea – founded in 1890 – recalls that its own “second floor was where female workers separated the tea.”

Inside these second-floor rooms, women sat on low stools with bamboo trays, plucking out stray stems and yellow leaves to ensure a perfect product. Some factories even had dedicated “stem-sorting rooms”, where workers separated impurities by hand. It was painstaking labour, but it gave women steady seasonal income and a sense of camaraderie that many still remember fondly.

Many of these old tea houses still stand. Visitors to Dadaocheng can tour Sin Hong Choon and Wang Tea, walking through the same sorting rooms where generations of women once worked. Even the narrow verandas and low-ceilinged lofts – once lively workspaces – are now preserved as part of Taiwan’s cultural heritage. As one local guide puts it, the tea boom “not only created jobs but, more importantly, gave women new strength and visibility.”

Pinglin: Heart of Baozhong Tea Country

Tucked in the hills of New Taipei City, Pinglin is the heartland of Wenshan Baozhong tea (包種茶). Its misty terraces and winding streets have been tied to tea for well over a century, and today it’s home to the world’s largest tea museum.

The Pinglin Tea Museum, opened in 1997, tells the full story – through displays of tea-picking tools, processing machines, and everyday farm life. The town itself still feels like a living museum: tea fields stretch up the slopes, while families run small shops selling their own harvests.

In the early and mid-twentieth century, most of the pickers were local women. Wearing wide bamboo hats and floral kerchiefs, they climbed the steep slopes during the spring and winter plucking seasons. Their earnings often made the difference between getting by and going hungry. Even now, older women in Pinglin are known for their skill and speed at picking the tender “one bud, two leaves” that define top-grade Baozhong.

Maokong: The High-Mountain Tea Village

A short gondola ride from Taipei City takes you up to Maokong (貓空), a mountain village famous for tea and sweeping views. Immigrants from Fujian brought the Tieguanyin variety here in the late nineteenth century, finding the climate almost identical to their native Anxi County.

Over time, Maokong became a hub for high-mountain oolong tea. Even today, while most visitors come for the scenic teahouses, local farms still rely on seasonal workers – many of them women. In the twentieth century, these included not only local Taiwanese but also Hakka women and mainland brides who married into farming families. During harvest season, you can still see women in long sleeves and gloves moving through the rows of tea bushes, repeating a rhythm that has been part of Maokong life for generations.

Nantou’s Mountains: Taiwan’s Central Tea Country

In central Taiwan, Nantou County is the heart of high-mountain tea. During Japanese rule, the colonial government promoted plantations here, developing famous varieties such as Dong Ding Oolong and Sun Moon Lake Black Tea.

These plantations needed a steady workforce, and women were central to it. In villages like Lugu, Zhushan, and Yuchi, families worked side by side – men tending fires and machines, women plucking and sorting leaves. A recent photography project describes how, even now, “tea cultivation in Nantou is a family affair,” often involving three generations of women during harvest.

Folk songs still celebrate the “tea-picking girls” (采茶姑娘), romanticising their bright kerchiefs and laughter among the rows of tea. Behind that charm, of course, lay long hours of real work – but it’s a tradition that endures. Today, many Nantou co-ops list both men and women as growers, and most hand-picking is still done by female crews. The region’s eco-tourism routes and museums, such as the Bagua Tea Garden, proudly showcase how these women’s efforts helped put Taiwan’s tea on the world map.

From Past to Present: Legacy and Continuity

Over time, women’s roles in tea have changed – but never disappeared. Many of Taiwan’s old factories, like Sin Hong Choon and Wang Tea, now serve as cultural landmarks, honouring the women who once worked there. Exhibits feature the benches, baskets, and simple tools they used, alongside photographs of tea sorters at work. At local festivals, retired tea workers – now grandmothers – sometimes demonstrate leaf-baking or stem-sorting for visitors, keeping those skills alive.

Even today, tea remains labour-intensive. During peak season, skilled pickers can earn between NT$6,000 and NT$8,000 a day. Increasingly, farms rely on Southeast Asian women – especially Indonesian and Vietnamese workers – many of whom are married to local farmers or employed through labour brokers. In many ways, their stories echo those of the early tea women: long days, steady pay, and pride in a craft passed from hand to hand.

Taiwan’s tea industry still carries the imprint of those who built it. From the “tea-picking girls” of Dadaocheng and Pinglin to the modern women tending the slopes of Alishan and Nantou, it’s a lineage of skill, resilience, and quiet transformation. Tea gave Taiwanese women some of their first real opportunities for wage labour and public participation – and even now, their work continues to shape the aroma and flavour of Taiwan’s most famous export.