TAIPEI: The humble tea egg, cheap and unassuming though it may be, has made an 80-year-old vendor indispensable in the scenic area surrounding Sun Moon Lake, one of Taiwan's most popular tourist attractions.

Chou Chin-pen was asked to inform the scenic area administration in advance of her day off because her tea egg stand is a "must-visit" for tourists from the mainland, the Chinese-language United Daily News reported yesterday on its front page.

Daily sales on holidays can reach 4,000 eggs, which Chou cooks with local black tea and dried mushrooms, she said.

The eggs, priced at NT$10 apiece, help not only feed her big family, but also have benefits for related up- and downstream industries, the report said, describing Chou as a legend of the grass-roots economy.

In a commercial area in Taichung city, central Taiwan, a wooden street stand selling iced black tea for NT$15 per cup has always drawn a long line of buyers.

The stand owners, Yu Tsai-sin and his son, could never have imagined that their small business, which began five years ago with sales of 20 to 30 cups a day, would one day increase to more than 1,000 cups a day.

Now Yu has opened a chain of 11 stands in the central Taiwan region.

Yu's wife said even an everyday item like black tea has its value, touting the tea they brew with locally grown tea as having a traditional flavor.

According to Yu, he and his son traveled all across Taiwan to find a recipe for brewing black tea with the same flavor he remembered tasting in the countryside when he was a boy.

Holding fast to the principle of not increasing his price since starting the business, his success has convinced him that running a business with small profit margins is the best marketing strategy.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 02/09/2010 page2)