I headed up to Lishan over the past couple of days, originally planning to check out the tea plantations in the Sinjiayang settlement, but to my surprise, the road is still impassable. With the winter tea harvest season just around the corner, the tea farmers in Sinjiayang are in for a real headache.
You might not know this, but the Sinjiayang settlement is a major tea-producing area in Lishan. However, there are very few local tea factories here, so most of the freshly harvested leaves are transported down to Lishan town or HuaGung for processing. If the roads aren’t cleared in time, both the quality and yield of the 2022 Sinjiayang winter tea are going to take a massive hit.
I talked to some local tea farmers, and they’re really stressed out right now. The local tea factories definitely won’t be able to handle the volume, and taking the alternative Jiayang-Ciluwan industrial road doesn’t work either—it takes over an hour, and the tea leaves would spoil by the time they got there. At this point, everyone is just praying the road gets cleared, otherwise the winter tea season is as good as gone.
This landslide happened at the 77K mark of the Central Cross-Island Highway (Provincial Highway 8) near Lingfu Bridge, which has always been a landslide-prone spot. Rockfalls started up again after the September 18 earthquake, and just days after crews finally cleared the debris and opened it for staggered traffic during three time slots, another massive landslide struck in the early hours of October 1st. I spoke with the construction crew, and they estimate clearing the slide won’t be finished until late October.
It looks like traffic during the tea season is bound to be affected. Let’s hope they can get it repaired enough to open for scheduled time slots, otherwise Sinjiayang’s tea farmers are in serious trouble this winter.
Update on October 3rd: Sinjiayang tea farmers appealed to the highway maintenance office, hoping to allow tea transport vehicles through during the winter tea season. For now, it’s tentatively planned to let tea transport trucks pass once an hour.
Note 1: The video was filmed at 6:00 AM on October 1st: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GEU2wmq5jI
Note 2: Photo 1 was taken in early August, and Photo 2 was taken at the exact same spot on October 1st.
