Penghu County’s Taipei Affairs Office on Saturday announced plans to hold a “Penghu Week” after one of the outlying island’s local delicacies, ice cream made from cactus fruit, proved surprisingly popular at FamilyMart over the International Workers’ Day long weekend.
Office director Chen Chi-yu (陳其育) said the office sealed a deal with the convenience store chain in August last year to use local cactus plants as a base for ice cream.
The deal was to be an introductory event to pave the way for Penghu agricultural and fishery products — such as Penghu sponge gourds, snow melons, the common ice plant and herbal tea made from Glossocardia bidens — to be better received on Taiwan proper, he said.
Photo courtesy of the Penghu County Government
Penghu County Commissioner Lai Feng-wei (賴峰偉) said that the county’s Agriculture and Fisheries Bureau and local farmers’ associations helped to gather sufficient cactus fruit to make the ice cream.
The ice cream was launched on May 1, and its success was reflected by people sharing photographs and impressions of the product online, Chen said.
The success of the ice cream has helped promote Penghu County and could, with the COVID-19 outbreak seemingly stabilizing in Taiwan, help prime the nation for Penghu’s tourism season, he added.
The office is in the process of talking with Familymart about holding Penghu Week events and selling unique local products at Familymart stores nationwide.
Commenting on the sale of fishery products, Chen said that the office and the bureau would be working through online platforms and focusing on delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Companies and corporate unions have been visiting Penghu to see the fishery products, which underscores the success of the office’s sales pitch, Chen said.
The county is looking to work with National Chung Hsing University and corporations to establish an agriculture zone in Penghu that would offer young people or those willing to devote themselves to agriculture a place to work, he added.
This would provide jobs for locals, provide a use for otherwise unused land and address the limited production of fishery products in the county, Chen said.
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