Taiwan’s microbreweries, filled with a passion for their craft, are continually trying out new ideas and concepts. From rearranging and recombining the four main raw materials they have extended their imaginations to add local Taiwanese ingredients. They have broken through barriers to enable craft beers to really “grow” in this land.
Zhuzihu (Bamboo Lake) is famous for its calla lilies, but 100 years ago it was the first place in Taiwan where Japonica rice was cultivated. Today, farmers have founded a club and worked with National Taiwan University to resume cultivation of Nakamura rice, the precursor of Taiwanese Japonica rice varieties, on a subplot of land in the Dinghu area of Zhuzihu.
The Nantou Distillery of the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation (TTL) has enjoyed quite a resurgence since the Jiji earthquake reconstruction effort. You might well describe it as having arisen from the ashes, with its Omar Whisky label the emergent phoenix.
Ciyakang might not leave a big impression on the uninitiated. Yet visitors may be surprised to learn that 2,000 years ago its workshops were the largest producers of jade in all of Southeast Asia.
Alcoholic beverages and tea are both popular cross-cultural drinks. However, in contrast to the only recent rise of the private-sector beer, wine, and liquor industry in Taiwan following the abolition of the alcohol and tobacco monopoly system upon our accession to the World Trade Organization in 2002, tea, of which Taiwan is a major producer, has long been loved by Taiwanese.
Since the 1990s, Taiwan’s government has promoted the “Go South” and “New Southbound” policies, under which the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have become fertile new ground for Taiwanese entrepreneurship. At the same time, Taiwan has opened up its labor market to migrant workers from Southeast Asia, and increasing numbers of Southeast Asians have immigrated to Taiwan by marriage.
When the name Taijiang comes up, activists in local revitalization will think of the “temple classes” movement there. Hikers recognize it as the starting point for the Mountains to Sea National Greenway. Meanwhile, birdwatchers know that Taijiang is a wintering ground for the black-faced spoonbill, and that the founding of Taijiang National Park was closely related to Taiwan’s efforts to protect this bird.
In the classic words of French writer Honoré de Balzac: “If I’m not at home, I’m at a café. If not at a café, I’m on the way to a café.” Sipping a delicious cup of steaming coffee is enough to launch one into a wonderful world of imagination.
Taiwanese growers are using smart agriculture to cultivate world-class coffee, and locally grown coffee is taking off! Visit a local coffee estate and sample its fine single-origin brews to fully appreciate what these growers are up to.
Xingang in Chiayi County appeared on maps of Taiwan as long as 400 years ago. It has experienced floods, earthquakes, large-scale migrations and the transition from a commercial harbor to an agricultural community. In the 1980s, when the dajiale gambling phenomenon was at its height, it produced a grassroots movement for the little town’s revitalization.
“One Amis beats three lawnmowers!” the saying goes, and the Amis describe themselves as the “grass-eating people.” Aside from embodying the tribe’s traditional food wisdom, the Amis’ enduringly robust foraging culture resonates with contemporary concerns about reducing carbon footprints and promoting sustainability and biodiversity. Go to any morning market in Hualien or Taitung, or to any restaurant or night market for tourists there, and you will find traces of their foraging culture.
