Emei Held Taiwan's First Festival for the Insect That Bites Its Tea

Emei Township in Hsinchu County held what its organizers called the nation's first tea festival built around an insect on April 15, a rite for the small green leafhopper, the pest whose feeding gives Oriental Beauty oolong its honey aroma, the Liberty Times reported.

Students from Emei Junior High School led the ceremony at a tea garden beside Emei Lake, the product of a three-year school project, the paper said. About 37 seventh- and eighth-graders performed readings, mountain songs, and a cicada dance, then set written wishes adrift on the lake. Acting township head Tian Zhaorong, farmers' association director Wen Xiuqi, and principal Chen Zili attended.

The leafhopper, Jacobiasca formosana, is a crop pest almost everywhere it lands. It pierces the tender buds and drinks their sap, stunting the leaf to a mottled yellow-green. Here the damage is the object. The wounded shoot develops the honey and ripe-fruit scent that defines Oriental Beauty, sold also as Bai Hao oolong and, in Taiwanese, pengfeng cha, or boaster's tea. The Tea and Beverage Research Station said the tea is made only from bitten buds of the Qingxin Dapao cultivar, grown in the northern hill districts of Beipu and Emei in Hsinchu, Toufen and Tongluo in Miaoli, Longtan in Taoyuan, and Shiding in New Taipei. The Agriculture and Food Agency traces the tea's honey note to the same bite.

That dependence sets the terms of the farming. Because the leafhopper will not settle where insecticide is sprayed, the gardens go unsprayed. Xu Yaoliang, a third-generation grower who has taken 13 special awards in Oriental Beauty contests, told the agricultural outlet Newsmarket that the harder the insects bite, the smaller the leaf and the better the tea, and that a two-hectare plot yielding 400 to 500 Taiwanese catties (about 530 to 660 pounds) in an ordinary year can drop below 100 catties (about 130 pounds) when the feeding runs heavy. The finest leaf, by Newsmarket's account, is cut in the summer heat.

Sources: Liberty Times, 全國首見「浮塵子祭」 峨眉湖畔開啟新文化慶典; Tea and Beverage Research Station, 東方美人茶; Agriculture and Food Agency, 認識東方美人茶！農糧署：獨特蜜香「這樣來」; Newsmarket, 顧好環境讓小綠葉蟬咬越兇越好.