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.
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
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