No one likes hardship, known in Chinese as “to eat bitterness,” but at one old-time Taipei establishment, customers are going out of their way to get something bitter.
Cup after cup, Zheng Yi-xiong, owner of the House of Bitter Tea, skillfully wields the teapot filled with bitter tea, made from the seeds of the tea oil tree. First-time customers may grimace in response to the bitterness of the tea, but the ghostly sweetness they savor after chasing it with a few hawthorn berry pills never fails to bring a smile back to their faces.
Zheng said that in 1929, his father, who had a background in traditional Chinese medicine, decided to find a solution for manual laborers who became overheated at work, and the result was bitter tea. The elder Zheng gave it out free to those who could not afford it.
“At that time, a cup of bitter tea cost NT$3. My dad wanted me to drink it, but I held out for NT$5 in spending money before I would.” He never imagined in those days that bitter tea would become as popular as it is today.
Artists and political figures stream into Zheng’s shop in search of a means to protect their health and remain in good voice. In earlier years, the famous singer Teresa Teng, not yet 20 at the time, was a frequent visitor with her mother.
After Zheng took over the shop, he moved into mass production with a modified version of his father’s recipe. In this way, he was able to bring its benefits to many more people. From production and manufacturing to sales, everything is done in-house. Even the honey used in the shop comes from Zheng’s own bees.
Entertainer Alec Su, who swears by the tea, has become a living advertisement for it, and the shop’s bitter tea choices have become popular worldwide, with customers coming all the way from Japan, where the product has really taken off.
Many older women come to the shop for the bitter tea creams and oils they use in their beauty routines.
To balance the bitter, Zheng and his wife have developed a sweet taro and lotus seed soup that sells at the rate of 1,000 bowls a day. “Kids and grown-ups alike love this soup,” Zheng said. “No matter how full you are when you go past the shop, you just have to stop in for a bowl.”
The shop also offers an unbeatable papaya milkshake with taro juice that actress and singer Stephanie Siao cannot get enough of. Another great health product is the rock candy lotus seed custard that is so smooth in the mouth that the price of NT$150 a serving does not deter people from ordering a second.
The House of Bitter Tea offers a range of delicacies from bitter to sweet, hot to cold. But it has bigger ambitions: to train its customers’ taste buds. Watching their expressions as they sample the myriad flavors on offer, Zheng smiles from ear to ear.
(This article originally appeared in The Liberty Times May 1.)