The news from the past couple of days—”Severe water shortage! Fenqihu and Alishan villagers scramble for water, pulling up each other’s pipes and falling out”—really took the shopkeeper by surprise. If household water is being fought over like this, then water for the tea must be in deep trouble. I headed up to the Alishan tea region over the last couple of days to check it out, and things are looking pretty grim, to be honest.
This time, I mainly looked at tea gardens situated at elevations between 800 and 1,000 meters. Half of the tea gardens in this section don’t have irrigation systems. Because of the water shortage, these tea plants are “not growing well,” and many are showing uneven growth or maturing prematurely. While the other half do have irrigation systems, water sources in the mountains are running low, so many of them are also just so-so. Only about one-tenth of the tea gardens are doing well.
What I mentioned in the previous paragraph applies to JinXuan tea. As for the late-ripening Qingxin Oolong, it “hasn’t sprouted at all yet,” running much later than in previous years. The shopkeeper feels that Qingxin Oolong is also in a precarious spot because its drought tolerance is even worse. With JinXuan looking like this, it’s hard to imagine Oolong faring any better. I’ve already spotted quite a few Qingxin Oolong bushes with “yellowing leaves” (Figure 3), and entire tea gardens that are practically withering away (Figure 4). It feels like even if the spring rains finally arrive, it will be hard to turn the tide.
I asked a few tea farmers, and they are all very pessimistic about the spring tea harvest. Some have even given up on harvesting entirely, just hoping the tea bushes can tough out the drought and survive. As I mentioned at the beginning of the month, the deciding factor for this year’s spring tea quality will likely come down to whose irrigation system is up to the task.
Most crops struggle without water, but bougainvillea is an exception. The shopkeeper remembers how bougainvilleas were in full bloom during the 2021 drought. The tea plant photos aren’t looking too great this time, so here are some lovely shots of bougainvilleas to lift our spirits. The weather forecast says it will rain on Friday (March 24th). Hopefully, we get plenty of it without any disasters, otherwise the villagers in Alishan won’t have any water to use.
