Taipei Info Hub used to be the Mitsui Warehouse, a storage built by Mitsui Group in the Period of Japanese Rule. Mitsui Group operated in Xindian, Sanxia and Daxi areas in Northern Taiwan, engaging in trades of agricultural products and natural resources such as tea, camphor and woods. Among them, the international campaign for Taiwan black tea was highly relevant to the Group’s business development in Taiwan.

 Taiwan’s black tea culture started to prosper in the Period of Japanese Rule for some good reasons. Back then, the demands for black tea incrementally grow in the international market, and the Japanese government wanted to reverse the dominance of Western and local merchants in Taiwan’s tea market which mainly dealt in Oolong and Pouchong tea. As a result, the Japanese government supported the founding of Mitsui Group in Taiwan to introduce black tea production to this island.

 To enhance the quality of black tea and sell it to the international market, Mitsui Group built a host of modern tea factories in Northern Taiwan and imported many tea processing machines to modernise black tea production in Taiwan. Mitsui black tea has since then been selling to the world, and the company even developed a well-known tea brand called Nittoh Black Tea to market it.

 This special exhibition first explores how the old Mitsui Group introduced and produced Assam black tea in Taiwan. Tracing the river basins, the exhibition then combs through the history of black tea production in Taiwan and connects Mitsui tea factories with its peripheral areas to reveal how they were relevant to Taiwan’s black tea culture.