The Taiwanese government's plan to curb cancer faces tough opposition: about 60,000 women who sit in roadside glass booths, often wearing little more than a bikini, selling the nation's oldest legal drug.
The so-called betel-nut beauties, who are unique to Taiwan, peddle the nation's second-largest crop to 17.5 percent of the adult male population, according to government estimates.
Chewing addictive betel nuts, the seed of the betel palm, increases the risk of mouth cancer, according to the Department of Health. Officials are encouraging farmers to plant alternatives to the US$359 million annual crop, urging about 1.6 million users to quit.
PHOTO: MAURICE TSAI, BLOOMBERG NEWS
"We aren't very optimistic," said Wu Chien-yuan (
Betel, or areca, nuts increase the heart rate and induce a mild sense of excitement, said Hahn Liang-jiunn (
As many as 400 million people from East Africa to Indonesia chew the seeds and leaves regularly, the British Medical Journal reported in April 2002.
Taiwan's beauties are even featured in tourist guides. Their betel-nut stands are a favorite among long-distance drivers.
"I use betel nuts to mark time and to keep myself alert," said Shen Ting-hui, 28, a truck driver from Taoyuan County, who has been chewing betel nuts for 10 years.
Paying a saleswoman dressed in a blue shirt, white shorts and white boots, Shen said the beauties' visual sales pitch encouraged him to buy from them.
"Of course I want to go to someone good-looking," he said.
While the government's goals are modest -- cutting the number of users by half a percentage point during the next four years -- the beauties are not.
`Government is stupid'
"Our government is stupid," said saleswoman Yu Hui-min, 38, dismissing the notion that betel nuts cause cancer. She wore a brown shirt and miniskirt and red high heels in her neon-lit booth in central Taipei.
"In my home town, betel nuts are a treat for guests," she said.
Betel-nut beauties emerged in the early 1990s as Taiwanese companies sought to cut labor costs by moving factories to China. Many of the beauties are unskilled workers who can't find better jobs because of that shift, said Robin Jai (翟本瑞), dean of social sciences at Nanhua University in Chiayi County.
Taiwan has more than 100,000 betel-nut booths, Jai said. Artist Christian Wu (
"With not much money, I can own my own business and wear beautiful clothes to work," said Lin Hsiao-wei, 35, who wore a leopard-print miniskirt as she dispensed betel nuts in the central town of Toufen (
"This is a good job," she said.
Lin, a former garment-factory worker, said she sells NT$8,000 to NT$9,000 of betel nuts a day. Her booth cost about NT$150,000 to set up and her profit margin ranges from 33 percent to 50 percent, she said.
Mouth cancer
People who chew betel nuts, drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes are 123 times more likely to get mouth cancer than those who don't, according to the Department of Health.
Mouth cancer killed about 15 of every 100,000 Taiwanese men in 2003, making it the fourth most lethal form of the disease, department figures show.
"There is sufficient scientific evidence that betel nuts can cause oral cancer," Hahn said. They also have been linked to asthma, diabetes and cancers of the esophagus and anus, he said.
A 2000 study of ethnic Indian users in London found that paan masala, a combination of spices and betel nut wrapped in a betel leaf, can be as addictive as cocaine, according to the British Medical Journal.
"Patients describe typical dependency symptoms, with difficulty in abstaining, withdrawal symptoms including headache and sweating, and need for a morning paan to relieve these symptoms," the 2002 Journal report said.
To combat the habit, the government is running anti-betel advertisements and education campaigns, including betel-nut prevention days.
Officials are also helping farmers to substitute orange and tangerine trees and Chinese herbs for betel crops.
Nut production declined 17 percent to 143,368 tonnes in 2004 from a peak of 172,574 tonnes six years earlier, according to the Council of Agriculture.
Still, the crop remains the country's second-largest, after rice, and affects the livelihood of 70,000 farming families, the council estimates.
Betel-nut sellers are coming under pressure, too. The police are stepping up inspections of betel-nut beauties for moral and safety reasons, said Patricia Huang, a spokeswoman at the Ministry of the Interior.
"Their revealing clothing may distract drivers and cause car accidents, as well as prompt male clients to harass or even sexually assault them," Huang said.
County officials are helping, closing down booths if they judge sellers' clothing to be too revealing, said Wang Yun-tsen, deputy director of economic development in Taoyuan County.
Taoyuan "is the main gate of our nation," Wang said.
The saleswomen "aren't a good subculture and we don't want people to use them to attract tourists."
Teng Chun-han, 28, a truck driver from Taoyuan, said the government should stop harassing the women, who are only trying to make ends meet.
He spends 12 hours a day on the road and uses betel nuts to stay alert, he said, paying a saleswoman wearing a short black dress and black boots.
"Eight out of 10 users will buy from betel-nut beauties," Teng said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by