The Healing Power of Tea

By Enan Wang

I’m Enan, a German guy in his early forties. Prior to moving to Taiwan, I had a career in real estate. I moved to Berlin to study Real Estate Management, intending to give my career a boost and dive into big city life. During my studies, I lived in India and later South Korea for some time. I stayed in that field and specialized in real estate asset management.

The higher I climbed up the ladder and engaged in the rat race, the more I questioned the purpose of what I was doing. Getting up in the morning, cramming myself in the subway packed with grimlooking people, and then chewing through my day with meetings, phone calls, and a flood of emails just to push some numbers on a spreadsheet didn’t feel right to me. It actually felt very wrong. More and more.

I had everything but I felt empty on the inside.

I gradually perceived Berlin — the city I was once so drawn to — as a fast-paced but cold, hostile, and aggressive concrete jungle inhabited by hipsters and pretentious people. Of course that isn’t what it is: Every place on earth is equally good and bad, but one’s perception is the decisive element.

One day I got introduced to Taiwanese oolong tea through my wife Shao-Yun, a Taiwanese who relocated to Berlin in 2015. At that time we both felt lost and were seeking a viable path through life. We started to experiment with tea meditation and soon implemented it into our daily lives. I liked it. It created a pocket of silence before work and on the weekends in my otherwise so-chaotic world.

This went on for many more months, until at some point it just clicked. It became clear that being creative with tea is what we want to focus on. We transformed our living room into a tea room. I eventually quit my job and took a yearlong break to realign. I then started to make my own music and we invited people to tea gatherings.

After one year had passed a decision had to be made: find another job and stay in Germany, or move to Taiwan and walk our own path. We chose the latter, not so much through reasoning as following our hearts. Taiwan was the obvious choice since my wife is from here, and I’d already developed a deep interest in East Asian cultures through my visits to South Korea, Japan, China, India, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and of course Taiwan.

We left everything behind, pushed the reset button, and started all over in Taiwan in May 2021. At first, we lived with my wife’s family in Chiayi. We soon bought a motorbike and started to explore the island, searching for a place where we’d want to settle down. In just a few months, we put around 10,000 km on the clock, exploring as much as we could, from the mountains to the sea, across the countryside…

During this journey we also built our tea map of Taiwan. We sat down with countless farmers and tea makers, listening and learning from them. In this process it became obvious to us that most of Taiwan’s agriculture depends heavily on fertilizers and pesticides. The countless betelnut farms in Taiwan’s west were an eye-opener and a huge shock for me. So we set out to find the cleanest, purest, and richest tea — sustainably farmed — that can be grown on Taiwanese land.

Around half a year later, during one of our motorbike trips across the island, we visited Taitung and immediately fell in love with it. The ocean, the clean air, the slow pace… all that felt so healing. We had just a few days to spend in the city when a vacant apartment by Liyu Mountain caught our eye. We called the landlord, took a look, liked it, and signed a lease on the morning of our departure back to Chiayi. Shortly after we relocated to our new place in Taitung. Finally we could settle down and fully focus on tea, meditation, and making music, photography and film.

Our tea room satotea became the center of our life. We started to welcome people to enjoy wild farmed tea in traditional gong fu style with us. (Wild farmed tea is grown with no agrochemicals at all, and with minimum human intervention.) We sit down, have a chat, and contemplate life. Meditation retreats have also become part of what we have to offer.

We also create lots of content through our international brand, satotea. This is more geared towards foreigners who might want to visit or even relocate to Taiwan / Taitung. Through satotea we introduce and document our life in Taitung, especially the breathtaking nature. We are active on Instagram and YouTube where our writing, photography and videos can be found.

Rationally our move to Taiwan doesn’t make sense to most people. But life isn’t all rational. Most of it can’t be planned for. So we decided to just follow our heart and contribute to a better world, a better society, and a better Taitung within our very limited means.

Being able to then share this tea with more people and raise awareness about the important topic of sustainable land use in Taiwan reminds us why we left our comfort zone in Germany. It reminds us why we bear the harsh climatic conditions along Taiwan’s east coast, the little black mosquitoes, and the countless noisy scooters that pass our house. But then there are those priceless moments, when we can sit down with people who are just as lost as we were when we left Germany. As we share a cup of tea with them in a safe and quiet space to rest their tired minds, a transformation takes place. They loosen up. We ease their pain. We provide relief for their body and soul.

This is the main reason why we are still here after three years. Other significant factors are the kindness and open-mindedness of the people and being surrounded by mountains and sea. Staring into the waves of the Pacific Ocean, just five minutes’ drive away, provides us with such deep relaxation. We also value having access to affordable and clean food from organic markets and small farmers. And lastly it’s such a bliss to not worry too much about how to dress or other social obligations city life brings along. I just get up, put on a T-shirt, shorts, flip flops and I’m good to start my day. This is Taitung!

I’ve visited many countries all over the world and I lived in India and South Korea for some time. From a practical point of view, what stands out to me — especially for people who’re considering moving to Taiwan — are the super-smooth public services, including health care. Everyone is friendly and helpful. Things get done quickly, efficiently, and at low cost. That’s something I could only dream of in Germany, India, or South Korea.