Song Gongxiang's water snowflake becomes a famous Meigong specialty

Water snowflake in Shenzhen, "wild lotus" in Meinong

It is hard to imagine that in just a few decades, the wild lotus, once a regional wild vegetable too humble for the table, stepped out of farmhouse kitchens in the 1990s, was transplanted from Zhongzhen Lake to the fields, spread across the Meinong plain, and sold to restaurants everywhere, becoming a signature Hakka dish of today. The wild lotus says nothing, yet it has a kind of magic that drives people to grow it, and through eating it to know Meinong and feel Hakka culture.

Yet before ever tasting wild lotus, we had already read about it in the original text of the Classic of Poetry: "Guan-guan cry the ospreys, on the islet in the river; the modest, retiring, virtuous, young lady, for our prince a good mate she. Here long, there short, is the duckweed, to the left, to the right, borne about by the current; the modest, retiring, virtuous, young lady, waking and sleeping, sought for her."

Xing, also written as Xing, is a perennial aquatic herb with opposite heart-shaped leaves floating on the water surface, clustered tubers, and slender stems that root at the nodes and sink in the water. Xingcai is what we now call wild lotus, scientific name "Brasenia schreberi," and it is a native species of Taiwan, China.

Wild lotus can be harvested year-round; the winter growing period is about three and a half months, while in summer it is about two months and ten days. Brother Gongxiang's wild lotus fields use soybean cake as the base fertilizer, with Jinxing No. 6 organic fertilizer as the top dressing; aside from the need to apply pesticide to control moths during the early 14 to 20 days after transplanting, no further pesticide is applied until harvest. During the process, grass carp are raised to suppress weeds and duckweed, and the black carp, because it has teeth in its throat, is the natural enemy of apple snails and river snails. One fen of wild lotus field raises about six grass carp and one black carp; the black carp can grow to 30 jin, which is quite huge.

Because Brother Gongxiang entered wild lotus cultivation relatively late, and the market consciously differentiated itself from the existing market to avoid mutual cannibalization, he almost entirely sells through his old contacts in the central and northern regions, while also striving to develop new customers. Brother Gongxiang wants to be a farmer with pricing power, refusing to let the market slaughter him at will. He said boldly: "The quality customers want, I can certainly achieve, but the price I set, consumers must also be able to accept."

Because he is familiar with the Meinong stream environment, he currently also accepts commissions from friends to work as an aquatic organism surveyor, striving to leave valuable baseline data for protecting Meinong's water resources and ecology.

※ How Brother Gongxiang's wild lotus is sold:
Wild lotus 10 jin or more, free shipping; 70 yuan per jin, shipping not included.
Can be divided into small packages for customers; usually five liang is enough for five servings, five liang per pack at 35 yuan.
Contact phone: 0921-227-055