President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday inaugurated the 15th Taiwan International Orchid Show in Tainan’s Houbi District (後壁), which features landscaping that traces the city’s development over the past 400 years.
Titled “Orchid Land, Reading Tainan” (蘭境,閱讀台南), the show is to open to the public today and run through March 11 at the Taiwan Orchid Plantation.
The Orchid Land pavilion revisits historic changes to the city, including sections showing the Taijiang Inner Sea (台江內海) in the European Age of Discovery, Fort Zeelandia under Dutch colonial rule and during the Chinese Ming Dynasty, traditional Qing Dynasty festivals, the sugar economy during the Japanese colonial period and the booming orchid production of the present day.
Photo: Yang Chin-cheng, Taipei Times
Other pavilions showcase award-winning orchids, a bazaar that offers breeding tips and booths designed by people from Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan.
Tsai said in a speech that the “diplomacy of orchids” demonstrates Taiwan’s beauty and glory, given the extraordinary orchids the nation exports and the foreign buyers the show attracts.
The plantation’s commercial service center strategically facilitates the production and export of Taiwanese orchids, and therefore every flower is the fruit of collaboration between industry, the government and academia, she said.
The government would offer more support to the domestic orchid industry to improve diplomacy of orchids, she said.
Tsai expressed her admiration for the aroma of a foxtail orchid cultivated by Taichung farmer Lai Te-shan (賴德善), who claimed the show’s top prize.
The plant has nearly 1,000 flowers on 18 stems.
One-sixth of the world’s orchids come from Tainan, which is why it is called the city of orchids, said Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲), who is also director of the show.
The show offers an international stage for locally cultivated orchids, and there is still room for the export trade to expand, Huang said.
Orchid exports last year earned about US$190 million, with sales in Southeast Asian countries growing remarkably, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) and Taiwan External Trade Development Council Chairman James Huang (黃志芳) said.
Orchids would be promoted in more countries targeted by the government’s New Southbound Policy, they said.
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