The cries of amorous swiftlets echo around the dark room, an unlikely gold mine for traders in southern Myanmar who are cashing in on rising demand for the edible nests from China’s growing middle class.
Dozens of buildings dedicated to the tiny birds have sprung up around Bokpyin in recent years, their grey concrete structures towering over the humbler wooden and brick homes of the town’s human inhabitants.
Every morning and evening the air is filled with high-pitched twitterings blasted from loudspeakers that draw thousands of the swallow-like birds home to roost.
Photo: Ye Aung Thu, AFP
Edible birds nests have become one of the main industries in the town, traditionally known for producing the chewable stimulant betel nut as well as rubber and palm oil.
Traders can charge more than NT$60,000 a viss (equivalent to 1.63kg) for the tiny nests — more than the average person in Myanmar earns in a year.
“We started making man-made bird nests (houses) 10 years ago,” said Paing Set Aung, who owns one of the buildings where hundreds of swiftlets make their homes in the rafters.
“Initially there was a house where the birds came to roost by themselves. After that, people started to construct man-made bird houses.”
Most of the tiny white nests, which are made from solidified bird spit, are sold to neighboring China.
Long considered the reserve of the country’s wealthy elite, who ate them during lavish banquets, they are in increasing demand from middle-class consumers.
Today the global edible birds nest industry is estimated to be worth NT$150 billion, most of it produced in Southeast Asia.
Myanmar’s exports have surged since 2011 — the year the former junta handed over power to a quasi-civilian government.
“Bird nests are one of the main businesses in Bokpyin,” said local Lin Aung, who built his first house five years ago and is now on his third. “China is the top buyer of bird nests here.”
‘CAVIAR OF THE EAST’
Once across the border, the nests are transformed into one of the most expensive foods in the world.
When boiled in water they dissolve into a gelatinous gloop which is then made into desserts or drunk as a soup or a tonic that is said to prolong life and improve strength.
There is little peer-reviewed scientific data showing that nests have proven medicinal properties. Nutritional studies have shown the saliva to be mainly made up of protein, followed by carbohydrates.
In Shanghai restaurants sell the “the caviar of the East,” as it is known, for hundreds of US dollars a bowl.
Many of them cater specifically to women, who believe the nests can help smooth the complexion and make them look younger.
The tonic is also said to help during pregnancy — one of Shanghai’s high-end spas solely for mothers-to-be even has its own restaurant and sells gift bags for as much as NT$17,300.
Shoppers can also order the products online, including candied birds nests from Myanmar to be eaten as sweets.
“In China, the bird nest has been a really famous and much-loved traditional tonic since ancient times,” Zhang Yi told AFP inside her NestCha restaurant.
“It is mild and a little sweet. It is good for women, the elderly, children and men.”
CHANGING INDUSTRY
These luxury products are a far cry from the nests’ humble beginnings on the islands of Myanmar’s southern archipelago.
To begin with they were harvested on the region’s many islands by daring climbers who risked life and limb scaling treacherous cliffs without any safety equipment.
For years the industry was dominated by the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd, a sprawling conglomerate controlled by the military elites that ran Myanmar for half a century.
But, as in much of Southeast Asia, production has increasingly moved into urban centers.
Locals in the southern city of Myeik started building houses to attract the birds decades ago, then later production spread to Bokpyin and nearby Kawthaung.
There are now more than 130 houses devoted to the swiftlets dotted around the region, according to state media. Competition for space in Bokpyin between bird nest producers and tourism developers has seen land prices surge to as high as NT$2.3 million a plot in downtown — on a par with parts of the commercial capital Yangon.
Nests are normally harvested three or four times a year, but traders can collect them often as once a month if they are in need of cash.
Producer Aung Kyaw Moe said that, because the swiftlet populations naturally increase as the birds become accustomed to their homes, the industry will only grow in the coming years.
“They are like humans because they come and live here after they get to know the place,” he told AFP, standing next to his tall wooden bird-house in Myeik.
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
RSS