Xu Guangfu now makes hemp rope; fair trade really is different.

Hemp rope products, freshly made

If a meal or a drink can be "freshly made" right in front of the customer, then a camera strap that is appealing in design, durable and eco-friendly can certainly be made that way too. Based in Chiayi, Hsu Kuang-fu of Ma lifu Studio is skilled at using various fair-trade and natural materials to custom-make handmade goods to suit each customer who comes to him, and, quite often, they are freshly made on the spot.

Born in 1983 and originally from Pingtung, Hsu Kuang-fu had always liked making little things by hand. One time at Lesheng he met a friend who was weaving things with fair-trade hemp rope, found it interesting, dug out the hemp rope weaving instructional books at home to teach himself, and began touring different markets with a stall in 2009. Hsu Kuang-fu can make all kinds of objects from hemp rope, such as bracelets, multi-purpose carrying cords, key rings and so on. Recently, someone even commissioned him to weave a chair back.

When asked what the brand name Ma lifu means, Hsu Kuang-fu said, "Malifu means 'very troublesome' in the Amis language, because making these things involves many small details that most people would not notice." Indeed, during the roughly 40 minutes it takes to make a camera strap, he could be seen deftly handling every step: now firing up a flame to burn off the prickly fibers on the hemp rope, now matching different materials for the webbing, now heating beeswax to shape the knots...

As for the word "ma" (hemp), it represents natural hemp ropes of varying thicknesses. Hsu Kuang-fu said that the hemp plant grows quickly and needs no pesticides, making it natural and eco-friendly, and he hopes the items he makes can be decomposed once they fall into the soil. Among the hemp ropes he uses, the fiber sources include ramie, jute, sisal and hemp, most of which come from fair-trade hemp rope from Bangladesh.