You may not know of a place called Highway Garden (
Flower farming in Taiwan originates in Tianwei (
PHOTOS: DEREK LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
Tianwei has earned its reputation for being at the heart of the country's flower trade and as such has beautiful gardens and more than 200 flower shops, nurseries and European-style coffee shops along the two-lane road leading to the town. Day and night, the Highway Garden (
Chen Hsi-chian (陳錫堅) is a second-gene-ration flower farmer in his 40s and is the prime mover behind the Highway Garden project in Tianwei. "Most of the flower farmers in this town inherit their business either from their father or grandfather. Tianwei now grows the biggest variety and highest volume of flowers in Taiwan," Chen said. "We cultivate around 200 hectares of land to grow more than 10 million chrysanthemum plants [of different types] each year, in order to meet the needs of domestic and overseas buyers. Whatever the season, a visitor will see different kinds of flowers being grown here."
Both Lee Kun-ti (
The most important reason for the success of flower growers in the area is however, beneath their feet. The thick mud brought down from mountain areas each year by a flooding Choshui River (
With its century-long history of flower farming, Tianwei has expanded its farming operation to approximately 300 hectares. This represents an estimated 43 percent share of Taiwan's wholesale flower market.
As such it was no surprise when Zhanghua County Magistrate Wong Chin-chu (
There is a good reason why the flower show is being held during the winter season. Due to the relatively cooler temperatures of around 22℃ on average from November to March in central Taiwan, the quality of the flowers is best at this time of the year. Also, the Lunar New Year holiday season -- between mid-January and mid-February, lasting about five days -- sees sales go up by three to four times the normal volume. The flower show in Hsichou from Jan. 17 to March 14 is therefore a good way of promoting sales of high quality winter flowers to the two largest public auction houses in Taiwan -- Neihu (
Presently, the total annual value of the flower industry in Taiwan is slightly more than NT$10 billion. Of this, more than NT$3.2 billion of business is in cut flowers, said Tom Chang (
Zhanghua County is now ambitiously committing nearly 5,000 hectares of land for flower growing in an attempt to account for 46 percent of the country's total plantation area.
Kevin Chung (
With its tropical and sub-tropical weather, Taiwanese flowers such as the Formosan moth orchard (
Chen said Taiwan's flower growers competed on level terms internationally in terms of variety, production skills, packaging and control of flower farming and the size of the Hsichou Flower Expo 2004 shows just how determined local growers are to build the country into a flower kingdom, through skilful management and plantation of tropical and sub-tropical plants and flowers. The show is a milestone for the local floral industry, which is set to grow further and perhaps even one day rival Holland.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless