“So we switched to coffee growing,” Chung said. “Coffee was our best hope to pull us together after the disasters.”
It wasn’t until four years later, however, that the community made a name for itself when Hsieh launched the “Taiwan Coffee Festival” at a cost of NT$3 million.
The event raised the profile of both the township and coffee industry and generated NT$200 million for the local economy. Over the next two years, revenue from the festival rose to about NT$400 million and then NT$1 billion.
Building on the success of the festival, the Gukeng Farmers’ Association inaugurated a recreational agricultural center in October 2003, Hsieh said.
Another draw, the Literature Walkway, a brainchild of writer Ku Meng-jen (古蒙仁), was inaugurated in 2004 when Ku was chief of the Yunlin County Cultural Affairs Department. A year later, Ku launched the Huashan Poet Festival.
The walkway runs a distance of more than 600m and matches works of famous writers set in Yunlin County with the beautiful surrounding landscape. The combination of nature and literature, along with the lure of local coffee, attracted an estimated 1 million tourists a year to the mountain village of 35,000 inhabitants for much of the decade.
More than 100 coffee shops and homestays have been set up in the greater Huashan region, reaping a good share of the hundreds of millions of dollars tourists bring into the area annually.
“Our business is booming, with a good number of visitors coming to Huashan just to enjoy a cup of coffee,” said Lai Song-chi (賴松志), a coffee shop operator who settled in Huashan after the 921 Earthquake.
Huashan’s economic prosperity, however, has not been immune to the country’s economic slump, as tourist numbers have plummeted in the past year.
Hsieh says the region must find innovative ways to revitalize itself again, such as improving coffee growing and roasting techniques, integrating sightseeing resources, developing regional agricultural products and tour itineraries, and improving the quality of tourist attractions.
But is hard to believe that any of those measures will live up to the tremendous boost the humble coffee bean gave to Huashan in pulling it out of its nightmare after the 921 Earthquake.
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