The disappearance of Taiwan's tobacco farms

Just as the demise of Taiwan’s salt industry doesn’t mean people have stopped adding salt to their food, and the dwindling of the sugar industry doesn’t indicate people are eating less candy, the near-collapse of tobacco growing in Taiwan isn’t the result of people quitting smoking. Fewer young men appear to be lighting up than before, but young women are fast picking up the slack.

Since Taiwan joined the WTO in 2002, the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp. (TTL) - a state-run enterprise and still the island’s dominant maker of cigarettes - has been buying much less tobacco from local farmers, and far more from cheaper overseas suppliers. The price of Taiwan-grown Virginia tobacco has slumped to the point where few farmers see any point in cultivating this once-lucrative cash crop.

Meinong (美濃), now part of Kaohsiung City, is the place in Taiwan most closely associated with tobacco, and the best place to go see what remains of the industry. Now that fields of tall green tobacco plants are hard to find, the most obvious sign of tobacco’s role in the local economy of yore are the town’s distinctive but redundant curing sheds. 

These small, sloping-roof buildings [pictured right] seldom cover more than 40m2 of land, and are made of various materials. Each shed has two floors. On top, there’s always a ventilation tower, which looks like the kind of place where you might lock up a mad aunt.

If you’re driving in from Qishan (旗山), before you reach downtown Meinong, turn right down Fuan Street (福安街). Several tobacco sheds, and also some of the best-preserved traditional courtyard homes, can be found in this community. The shed at no. 24 may not be as attractive as other tobacco buildings in Meinong but it is, almost certainly, the oldest surviving tobacco building in the area. It dates from 1938, the year in which Meinong’s farmers began cultivating tobacco.

Before 1938, Meinong’s principal crops were sugarcane, bananas, and black beans. Meinong wasn’t the first place in Taiwan to grow tobacco, and after 1938 it wasn’t the only place where Virginia leaf was cultivated. In Chiayi, Taichung, Miaoli, Yilan and Hualien, significant amounts of land were given over to tobacco [a field of which is pictured here]. 

Meinong’s first curing sheds were constructed according to Japanese designs; in architectural terms, they are regarded as “Osaka-style.” Some are brick. Others have a concrete first floor, and a second floor made of cheaper materials. The roofs are usually tile, with rusting ironwork atop the ventilation tower. Many are made of wattle-and-daub, the wattle consisting of slats of split bamboo, onto which daub (a mixture of clay, soil, rice straw, chaff, and pig dung) has been slapped. A lot of traditional homes and farm buildings in Taiwan were constructed the same way; it’s a cheap, easy way to build, but if the hard surface of the wall gets cracked, the entire structure deteriorates very rapidly.

To better understand the curing process, do take a look inside one of these sheds. You’ll notice that the central chamber, where the curing took place, has thick walls and a thick metal door. If this door is open, gaze inside and you’ll see that the room goes all the way up to the ventilation tower at the top of the building. Instead of floors or ledges, there are wooden racks on either side. This is where the tobacco would be hung for curing. 

The curing fire would be under the floor of the central chamber, and it would be fed through small portholes like those on the side of a traditional kitchen stove. The shed’s other rooms were used to store firewood. Flue curing consumes a great deal of fuel, and ecologists say this stage of the tobacco-plant-to-cigarette process is disastrous in environmental terms, and has become the No. 1 cause of deforestation in Malawi and other countries.

As soon as tobacco is harvested – in Meinong, the leaves were usually gathered around Lunar New Year – most of the water must be removed from it, hence the need for curing.

There are at least four different ways to cure tobacco. Air curing involves simply hanging the leaves under a shelter that protects them from rain but exposes them to breezes. Sun curing - spreading the leaves out under the sun - is done in a few places. Taiwan’s climate is too humid for either air- or sun-curing to be successful. Fire curing needs little explanation; flue curing, practiced in Taiwan, takes the hot air generated by a fire (but not the smoke or sparks), and circulates it through a tobacco-filled chamber.

With all forms of curing, timing is critical. If done too fast, the leaves end up discoloured, with can affect their flavor. If done too slowly, the leaves rot. Moreover, humidity within the curing chamber must be carefully regulated so as to allow the leaves to dry out slowly. Too-rapid drying would cause them to turn black.

In Meinong, the temperature within the chamber would be permitted rise by five degrees Celsius per day for eight to ten days, until it reached 73 to 80 degrees Celsius. Tobacco farmers used to take turns to watch the fire throughout the days and nights. By the 1990s, however, the process was computer controlled.

During the curing process, the leaves would change colour from green to yellow [see above]. Once cured, the chamber would be opened to fresh breezes, which would slightly re-hydrate the leaves, ensuring they were not too brittle to be turned into cigarettes. 

If you read Chinese, you’ll probably notice glued to the metal door some old curing licenses issued by the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau (the central government agency that later morphed into the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp.) These were issued annually [shown left]. 

According to a 2004 survey, Meinong used to have 1,814 tobacco barns. By the time of the survey, 402 had been demolished or destroyed by fire; 991 had been converted (often into garages or storerooms), and 421 remained intact.

As well as being the only legal retailer of cigarettes on the island, the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau enjoyed monopsony power - it was the only legal purchaser of tobacco on the island, and could therefore determine prices. However, Meinong’s farmers weren’t ruthlessly exploited; during the industry’s heyday, a tobacco grower typically earned two to three times more than a civil servant. Not surprisingly, the area devoted to the crop expanded from 234 hectares in 1946 to 1,342 hectares in 1957, and around 2,300 hectares by the late 1960s. As recently as the 1970s, one in four Meinong families grew tobacco on their land.

Reasons to love Taipei

If you plan to spend a week or more in Taipei, and so have enough time to soak up the atmosphere of the city as opposed to rushing from one attraction to another, this article may be of interest. Some of the reasons listed apply to every part of Taiwan (health care is the same price wherever in the country you go), and some are actually truer outside Taipei than in the capital (the cost of living is much lower in the south than in the north, for instance). But overall it's an excellent summary of why a lot of Western and Asian tourists and expatriates adore Taipei. The accompanying images are superb, too.

The photo above shows the exterior of Taipei's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Shuanglong Waterfall

Taiwan's landscape is often reshaped as a result of floods and landslides triggered by summer typhoons. It used to be possible to drive very close to Shuanglong Waterfall (雙龍瀑布), visible in the distance, but now the only way to reach it is by crossing a long footbridge that's off limits to the general public. Of course, some people ignore the rules.

This photo and the following directions come from Taiwan's Waterfalls, a very useful English-language website which has excellent images and GPS coordinates of over seventy waterfalls around Taiwan.

Shuanglong Waterfall can be reached by taking Highway 21 from Shuili in Nantou County (水里鄉南投縣). "Follow Hightway 16 about 8km east to the small aboriginal village of Dili (地利). There will be two signs directing you to Shuanglong. Follow the signs across the valley and drive up to Shuanglong.  You can either park near the church if you want to go for a one-plus hour hike or drive a little further and turn left where there is mural of dancing men and a waterfall sign in Chinese. The easiest hike is to walk along the road but you can also start at the church and walk uphill following the irrigation canals [which are no more than 1m wide]. There are a few turns but just keep going along the canals and you will arrive at [the footbridge shown]."

The Roman Catholic Church in Dili runs an inexpensive campsite/hostel. From Dili, County Road 63 is a very scenic way to approach Sun Moon Lake via the indigenous community of Tannan (潭南).

Part of Highway 21 becomes Highway 29

At the end of last year, the southern section of Highway 21, from Namasia to Linyuan (both in Kaohsiung City), was redesignated Highway 29. According to Chinese-language media reports, this signals the central government's abandoning of any hopes to connect the northern segment of Highway 21 (which runs from near Puli in Nantou County to Tataka in Yushan National Park via Sun Moon Lake) with the southern part of the road. 

Environmentalists are applauding the move, as it will better protect ecologically-rich uplands. Highway 29 is 112km long; the southern end meets Highway 17, on which it's a short hop into Pingtung County's Donggang Township. Towns along the way include Jiaxian and Qishan. South of the latter, it passes right by Foguangshan and the Buddha Memorial Centre. Also accessed by the highway is San-He Tile Kiln, where I took these photos a few years ago. 

At the time of writing, the road was still labelled as Highway 21 on Google Maps.

The Kanakanavu and Hla'alua Tribes

During a recent revisit to Wulai Atayal Museum, I was pleased to see they've kept their displays bang up to date and list all 16 Austronesian tribes recognized by Taiwan's government. The two 'newest' tribes are the Kanakanavu and Hla'alua peoples; the former live in Kaohsiung City's Namasia District (那瑪夏區), while the latter are found in the same city's Taoyuan District (桃源區). As you can see from the photo - part of a map in the museum showing the locations and sizes of all 16 tribes - both are tiny minorities within Taiwan's aboriginal population, which itself is little more than 2% of the total population.

The groups' applications for recognition were approved in June 2014. Cheryl Robbins has written about the tribes and their campaigns to have their identities separated from the neighbouring Tsou and Bunun peoples. Visitors interested in exploring Taiwan's indigenous villages are advised to buy her specialized guidebooks. 

Taiwan's northernmost point

The lighthouse at Fugui Cape (富貴角), the most northerly point on Taiwan. The government in Taipei does control territory further north, namely in the Matsu Islands. The weather here is often blustery but walking all the way around the cape - starting or ending in the quiet seaside village of Laomei (老梅) - is worthwhile.

Travel in Taiwan magazine recently visited this part of the world. Click here and flip to page 41 to see the article by Joe Henley, who's also written a Taiwan-themed thriller. For more about Taiwan's lighthouses, see this 2012 blog entry.

A Pritzker Prize winner's church in rural Taiwan

Houbi (後壁) in Tainan is best known these days for being the center of Taiwan’s thriving orchid export industry and the site of an annual orchid-related trade show. But if you're more interested in heritage than horticulture, head to the village of Jingliao (菁寮), which has a photogenic old street and a strikingly modernist church. The latter, Saint Cross Church, is a Roman Catholic place of worship designed in the mid-1950s by Munich-trained architect Gottfried Boehm (b1920). 

At that time Boehm was not famous, but his career quickly took off. In 1986 he won the Pritzker Prize, one of the world’s premier architecture awards. His landmark is impossible to miss. The spire (shown above) is a cypress-framed alloy-covered pyramid that’s higher than - and in terms of color quite different to - anything else in the village, which itself is surrounded by flat agricultural land. To learn more about the church and its founding, see this excellent article.