You may not know of a place called Highway Garden (
Flower farming in Taiwan originates in Tianwei (
PHOTOS: DEREK LEE, TAIPEI TIMES
Tianwei has earned its reputation for being at the heart of the country's flower trade and as such has beautiful gardens and more than 200 flower shops, nurseries and European-style coffee shops along the two-lane road leading to the town. Day and night, the Highway Garden (
Chen Hsi-chian (陳錫堅) is a second-gene-ration flower farmer in his 40s and is the prime mover behind the Highway Garden project in Tianwei. "Most of the flower farmers in this town inherit their business either from their father or grandfather. Tianwei now grows the biggest variety and highest volume of flowers in Taiwan," Chen said. "We cultivate around 200 hectares of land to grow more than 10 million chrysanthemum plants [of different types] each year, in order to meet the needs of domestic and overseas buyers. Whatever the season, a visitor will see different kinds of flowers being grown here."
Both Lee Kun-ti (
The most important reason for the success of flower growers in the area is however, beneath their feet. The thick mud brought down from mountain areas each year by a flooding Choshui River (
With its century-long history of flower farming, Tianwei has expanded its farming operation to approximately 300 hectares. This represents an estimated 43 percent share of Taiwan's wholesale flower market.
As such it was no surprise when Zhanghua County Magistrate Wong Chin-chu (
There is a good reason why the flower show is being held during the winter season. Due to the relatively cooler temperatures of around 22℃ on average from November to March in central Taiwan, the quality of the flowers is best at this time of the year. Also, the Lunar New Year holiday season -- between mid-January and mid-February, lasting about five days -- sees sales go up by three to four times the normal volume. The flower show in Hsichou from Jan. 17 to March 14 is therefore a good way of promoting sales of high quality winter flowers to the two largest public auction houses in Taiwan -- Neihu (
Presently, the total annual value of the flower industry in Taiwan is slightly more than NT$10 billion. Of this, more than NT$3.2 billion of business is in cut flowers, said Tom Chang (
Zhanghua County is now ambitiously committing nearly 5,000 hectares of land for flower growing in an attempt to account for 46 percent of the country's total plantation area.
Kevin Chung (
With its tropical and sub-tropical weather, Taiwanese flowers such as the Formosan moth orchard (
Chen said Taiwan's flower growers competed on level terms internationally in terms of variety, production skills, packaging and control of flower farming and the size of the Hsichou Flower Expo 2004 shows just how determined local growers are to build the country into a flower kingdom, through skilful management and plantation of tropical and sub-tropical plants and flowers. The show is a milestone for the local floral industry, which is set to grow further and perhaps even one day rival Holland.
The entire saga involving the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and its Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continues to produce plot twists at such a rapid pace that fiction publishers would throw it out for being ridiculously improbable. This past week was particularly bizarre, but surprisingly the press has almost entirely ignored a big story that could have serious national security implications and instead focused on a series of salacious bombshell allegations. Ko is currently being held incommunicado by prosecutors while several criminal investigations are ongoing on allegations of bribery and stealing campaign funds. This last week for reasons unknown Ko completely shaved
The self-destructive protest vote in January that put the pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) side in control of the legislature continues to be a gift that just keeps on giving to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Last week legislation was introduced by KMT Legislator Weng Hsiao-lin (翁曉玲) that would amend Article 9-3 of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) to permit retired and serving (!) military personnel to participate in “united front” (統戰) activities. Since the purpose of those activities is to promote annexation of Taiwan to the PRC, legislators
Nov. 18 to Nov. 24 Led by a headman named Dika, 16 indigenous Siraya from Sinkan Village, in what is today’s Tainan, traveled to Japan and met with the shogun in the summer of 1627. They reportedly offered sovereignty to the emperor. This greatly alarmed the Dutch, who were allies of the village. They had set up headquarters on land purchased from the Sinkan two years earlier and protected the community from aggressive actions by their more powerful rivals from Mattau Village. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) had been embroiled in a bitter trade dispute with Japan, and they believed
Anyone who has been to Alishan (阿里山) is familiar with the railroad there: one line comes up from Chiayi City past the sacred tree site, while another line goes up to the sunrise viewing platform at Zhushan (祝山). Of course, as a center of logging operations for over 60 years, Alishan did have more rail lines in the past. Are any of these still around? Are they easily accessible? Are they worth visiting? The answer to all three of these questions is emphatically: Yes! One of these lines ran from Alishan all the way up to the base of Jade Mountain. Its
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