The railway leading to Alishan is 72 km in total. It starts from the space 30 meters above sea level and rises up to 2450 meters above sea level, the gradient of which is so big that is rare in the world. From the mountain foot to the peak, train ascends as if it were travelling spirally along “winding staircase”. Circling mountain and warming itself into tunnels, striding valley, with birds hovering below the train wheels. Along the route of ascending in a few hours, one can enjoy the scenery of vegetation of four categories in tropical, sub-tropical, temperate and frigid zones. Those rare and grotesque trees form the “green sea” on the Alishan. When the mountain wind blows hard, the mountain forest, like terrifying waves, makes big loud thunder, which is the famous soughing in the forest trees of vast area in Alishan.

Every tourist for Alishan is interested in witnessing the majestic view of “Mystical Tree of Alishan”. On the east side of the Mystical Tree Railway Station of the main Peak of Alishan, there stands a sturdy towering tree slightly slant. Although the main trunk is broken, yet the branches on the top are green and verdant. The tree is about 52 meters high and the diameter is about 23 meters, which needs ten more people to jointly embrace it. It is estimated that its high age is 3000 odd years, a king tree in Asia.

The oriental cherry all over the slopes of Alishan is also a wonder. During spring, red and white oriental cherry blossoms up hill and down dale, crowding together gorgeously. They mingles with the verdant forest, as if the peaks of Alishan had been splendidly attired in green clothes dotted with red flowers, making one intoxicated.

In the evening, there appears often the magnificent sea of clouds in Alishan. Reaching the terrace at the peak, when one looks far into the distance, he can see the white clouds emerging form valleys and hovering with wind. Sometimes it looks like a vast expense of water drowning mountains and peaks, making pinnacles and tops of trees above turn out like floating islets. Sometimes it looks like waves breaking and foaming with tides high and low. Sometimes it looks like earth covered with cotton, and you feel a vast expanse of whiteness under you feet. When it is fine day, the verdant sunset-bathed sea of cloud glitters in different colors, dark-brown, apricot pink, sapphire blue, bright red and dark green, all changeable without end, it appears more mystical and attractive.

There is a beautiful sun observation tower on the terrace of the famous Zhu Mountain peak of Alishan. At the crack of dawn, if you ascend the tower in the midst of freshness of air, you can see the grey outline of Yu Mountain far away would suddenly be edged with golden glow when radiance, increases all of a sudden. At the very moment, the sun as if jumps out off the top of Yu Mountain, shining with boundless radiance to all sides, myriads of golden rays burst one after another from blue mountain and verdant valley, a scene majestic in all its variety.

It comes from both oxidation and the baking process. And again these little kernels when you brew this tea they’ll be much darker then this, but they’ll open up into a full tea leaf so you know when you make this tea you want to use a little bit less. This oolong here was actually a fall harvest and typically the winter and spring harvest are the most sought after oolongs. But with a fall harvest you can actually get a really high grade tea at a little bit lower price. So that’s one reason that you know people will drink some of the fall oolong or summer teas but we will talk about that later.

Dong Ding has a interesting history because Dong Ding is an area, the mountain is called Dong Ding, it’s in Nantou, Lugu area in Taiwan and this Dong Ding is a play on words because Dong Ding means frozen summit which refers to the mountain, and it’s very cold, but also to the fact that when people go harvest this tea and they would get numb finger and toes because the, it’s so cold so that was the frozen tips, was the finger tips and the ends of their toes.

The first tea plant planted on Dong Ding mountain was in eighteen fifty five and so they’ve been producing oolong there since then and Dong Ding is one of the most famous teas exported from Taiwan. And with this baked well oxidized oolong you are going to have a more full mouth and a full body flavor to the tea. And again it will also be very aromatic.

One thing that baking oolong does is it brings out a lot of, instead of a floral it’s going to be more of a really ripe, ripe fruit of aroma and flavor sort of like a extremely ripe pear. So this is a tea that people like to drink if they drink a lot of tea and they want something that’s going to give them more of a full mouth flavor. Dong Ding is a good choice for those, those tea drinkers. So once again that’s a little bit about baked Dong Ding Oolong from Taiwan.