Twenty minutes from the city, up a mountain

Taipei has a habit of putting good things within easy reach. Maokong is the best example: a cable car that leaves from a metro station on the edge of the city, climbs a forested ridge, and drops you into tea country where the hillsides are terraced with tea bushes and the teahouses have views across the basin.

Do this on a weekday if you can. Half a day is plenty.

Getting up there

Take the MRT to Taipei Zoo station on the brown line, then walk five minutes to the gondola base. The gondola has four stops and you want the last one, Maokong.

• Ride time: about 20 to 30 minutes depending on stops
• Fares are cheap; an EasyCard works on the gondola
• Crystal cabins, with a glass floor, cost a little more and are worth it once
• The line closes one day a week for maintenance, usually a Monday. Check before you go.

There is a mid-station at Zhinan Temple, and it is worth getting off for one leg. The temple compound is built into the hillside and has a courtyard with a view, plus a small trail that connects back to the gondola. Twenty minutes of your day, well spent.

At the top: what Maokong actually is

Maokong is a tea-growing area that has been producing oolong for over a century. The hillside is planted in rows of waist-high bushes, and the village at the top is a strip of teahouses along the road.

It is also, and this surprises people, extremely popular with local families on weekends. The path along the ridge is easy, mostly flat, and lined with places to sit down. Nobody is going to make you hike.

Two easy walks:

• The Maokong tea promotion centre and the trail around it, 40 minutes, gentle
• The path toward Zhangshan Temple, longer, with orchards and small farms along the way

Drinking tea, properly, without paying a fortune

This is the reason to come and the part people get wrong. There are two kinds of teahouse here.

The first kind sells you tea and a view, brings you a pot, and charges you somewhere between 250 and 600 New Taiwan dollars per person. Fine. Sit outside, take an hour over it, watch the cloud move through the valley.

The second kind is the traditional one where you buy tea by weight and brew it yourself at a table with a hot water tap, using the poured-out first infusion to warm the cups. It takes practice and nobody minds if you get it wrong. It is also cheaper per hour, and it is how local families spend a Sunday.

Oolong is the local speciality. If you are unsure, ask for a lightly oxidised one, which is floral and forgiving. Tieguanyin-style roasted teas are heavier and better with food.

Eating up here

The teahouses mostly serve simple food: noodles, tea-flavoured pastries, tofu, and the local speciality of tea-smoked eggs. There are also a few restaurants with mountain vegetables and chicken soup. Prices are reasonable, roughly what you would pay in central Taipei for the same thing.

Bring some cash. Most places take cards now, but the smaller stalls do not.

Weather and timing

• Maokong is often in cloud when the city is clear. That is normal, and the mist is half the atmosphere.
• Late afternoon gives you the best light and the city lights starting to come on in the distance.
• Summer afternoons bring thunderstorm showers. Go in the morning in July and August.
• If it rains, go anyway. The teahouses are covered and the terraces look better wet.

Pair it with an evening at a night market on the way back into town, and you have had one of the best days Taipei offers without buying a single ticket to a famous sight.

Originally published on 71Asia Tours blog.