The Tung Blossom Hakka Festival kicked off yesterday with a concert and poetry reading held at a mountain resort in Miaoli County, a Hakka stronghold.
Addressing the opening ceremony, President Chen Shui-bian (
"The annual tung Blossom Festival has helped enrich our cultural activities and promote tourism and economic development in our major Hakka communities," the president said, adding that the festival also offers tourists lavish opportunities to enjoy the scene of "snow in summer" created by the white tung flowers that look like snow flakes.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
Chen later joined the council's chairwoman, Yeh Chu-lan (
They then joined a group of elementary school children in reciting a poem dedicated to tung flowers which bloom from the beginning of April through May in Miaoli, Taoyuan and the Hsinchu mountainous regions -- the country's major Hakka homelands. The poem, titled an Ode to Tung Flowers, was written by Lee Chiao, one of the nation's most prominent Hakka writers.
The poetry reading was followed by a concert featuring some Hakka folk songs.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The council has planned a total of 341 festivities, including pottery making, flower appreciation, ecological tours, extracting tung seed oil, painting exhibitions, woodcarving shows, photo competitions, Hakka singing contests, Hakka food tasting and seminars on Hakka cultural heritage and literature, to be held during the festival. The activities will take place in 21 townships in Miaoli, Taoyuan and Hsinchu counties.
The Directorate General of Posts has issued postage stamps and commemorative envelopes in connection with the festival, while state-owned Chunghwa Telecom has started selling phone cards bearing the motif of tung flower.
The council has expressed the hope that the number of local tourists will see a marked increase this year since many local people have canceled their overseas travel plans amid the current global outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
One of the activities available to tourists is to travel by boat near the Shihmen Dam (石門水庫). The surrounding hills of the reservoir have plenty of tung trees in full bloom. Starting from Amuping (
Another option is to go to Neiwan (內灣), a Hakka village renovated to attract tourists. The village looks more like a theme park than a village; after the restoration, the village was decorated with drawings taken from the works of comic book illustrator Liu Hsing-chin (
Liu made his name in the 1970s, and he is from a village close by. Paintings of two of his most well-known characters, Old Auntie (
Most shops sell local delicacies such as dumplings in wild ginger flower leaves (
Dining out in Neiwan seems to be an indispensable part of any package tour. Restaurants in the village offer more or less the same kind of cuisine. Typical Hakka fare often features wild chicken meat with orange sauce, pig intestines fried with ginger and assorted fried vegetables.
A village landmark is the Neiwan cinema. In the 1940s and 1950s it used to be the local entertainment center and played movies for nearby miners. When TV sets began to appear in the communities in the 1960s, the cinema had to replace the movie with striptease shows to survive. And when the striptease acts no longer attracted enough customers, the cinema had to close.
Another place to see tung blossoms and other activities is Paoshan Reservoir (
The flourishing of the tung tree, also known as the tung oil tree bearing the academic name of aluerites fordii hemi, in the mountain regions in northern Taiwan was described as a "beautiful fallacy" made decades ago.
With a view to cashing in on the thriving demand for wooden furniture materials to be exported to Japan, farmers in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli areas started planting wutung trees (firmiana simplex, commonly named Chinese parasol tree) in the 1960s. But the difficulty in growing wutung trees later forced many farmers to switch to tung trees, which are much easier to take care of. Both trees trace their roots to Yangtze River area in China.
After the Japanese customers discovered the wood was of the wrong kind and stopped purchases from local suppliers, the tung oil trees were left uncut.
Three decades later, those trees are flourishing with profuse blossoms in spring and have become a major tourist attraction in the Taoyuan-Hsinchu-Miaoli area.
The trees can still be used for carving, furniture and wood pulp. The oil extracted from the seeds was used as a key ingredient for varnish and it remains a must for Hakka people who produce hand-made umbrellas with oil paper.
On the Web: http//www.hakka.gov.tw
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