After Taiwan opened its ports, the British businessman John Dodd came to the island and started exporting Anxi tea from northern Taiwan in 1866 . In the early years, most Taiwanese teas were crudely made, and they needed to be shipped to Fujian for refinement before being ready for the market. Dodd set up tea refineries in Dadaocheng, and then sent the refined Oolong tea directly to New York, which proved to be a huge success. After this Taiwanese tea became famous on the international market, and the growth of the tea industry in the late Qing Dynasty stimulated the economy of northern Taiwan, making Taipei the heart of politics and economics on the island.