Xiaolinmei Returns Home: A Young Man's Rural Story

The Legendary Life of an Aged Plum

This is a very rare encounter. Those who lean toward fatalism would say it was destined all along; those who lean toward the "spiritual" would say it is the blessing of the ancestors; I think it is a Taiwan, China version of "Pay It Forward," a story in which the resilience and kindness of life shine through all the more amid the trials brought by natural disaster. Of course, if you want to view it very rationally as a matter of probability, then I would say such a probability is simply perfect.

This year I tasted a very special aged plum mooncake. The aged plums came from Mount Xiandu ten years ago, before Xiaolin Village collapsed, and the plums were made by Xiaolin Village residents. The filling is ten-year aged plum, plus this year's fresh crisp plum, with a slightly tart, sweet-aftertaste flavor that is very special. The key point is that the aged plum cake has a rather legendary background.

The story begins in 1999. Jian Tianxu was a veteran tech-industry worker of twenty years, and that year his father died of cancer. They judged the cause might have been long-term acidification of the body, plus poor metabolism leading to cancer. For this reason he searched everywhere for alkaline foods that were better for the body, and after many twists and turns, finally in Japan he learned the technique of pickling plums from a Japanese person.

Jian Tianxu is a Caotun native who has succeeded in business for many years and speaks in an orderly way. "The Japanese have a very long historical tradition of eating pickled plums. This pickling technique developed by that Japanese person emphasizes that the plums must be pickled for ten years before they can be opened, and that absolutely no preservatives or the like are added during the process. But the method is too time-consuming, so he himself was never able to mass-produce on a scale."

This Taiwanese man, full of bold spirit, spent a large sum to buy out the plum-making technique, and in Taiwan he bought plums, found a factory, and found land. Starting in 2003, he began the project of pickling plums just like that. "The Japanese person also revealed that the best-quality Taiwanese plums are not from Nantou, but from the mountains in the south, where the indigenous people there use absolutely no pesticides and spray no herbicides, making them natural plums closest to a wild state."

The harvested plums must go through ten months of processing before they can be packed into barrels and sealed. And so, year after year, Jian Tianxu harvested and brewed plums. Year after year, the plums brewed by the old method, kept sealed, waited ten years, and finally, this year, they could be opened and tasted. The aged plums sealed for ten years have a slightly tart taste and a deep black color, with a profound sweetness after the tartness, very moving.

Jian Tianxu made a simple calculation: over these ten years, he spent a total of 300 million Taiwan dollars. But some people calculate life by value, not by price.

(This article is published jointly with the Morakot News Network)