Tea household entrepreneur of Pinglin– Cultivation of Crafts, and Lifestyles of Tea farmer, Tea master, and Tea merchant.

Locating in the northern Taiwan, Pinglin is the only tea town with all of the area covered by traditional tea industry in Taiwan. Due to the restricted regulations of the Feicsui Fresh Watershed Protection Zone, neither industries nor developments could establish in the entire Pinglin area. Therefore, Pinglin is the only tea region in Taiwan with small household size tea entrepreneurs everywhere. Every head of a tea household could potentially be the key person to manage their own tea business, that is “tea household entrepreneur”(茶戶長). Within this context in mind, each tea household entrepreneur produces his characteristics of tea flavors and styles that could be distinguished from others. Based on Qualitative methods, I examine how local tea household entrepreneurs create the Pinglin tea crafts to be local special products within the struggles of the rapid industrialization in the global tea trade and the declination of Taiwan tea exporting business.