Summer Farming Rural Grassroots Interview Series 2: Visiting Erlin Wanggong (1)

Text by Lin Le-xin, Chen Ning, Huang Yu-ying, Ji Xin-yun, Yang Xiang-lin, Lin Ming-hua, Chen Yi-jun, Wu Jia-ling, Lu Guan-ming, Zheng Bi-wei

Preface: About those blurry yet warm numbers...

The "Xiayun Erlin/Fangyuan Interview and Survey Group" is one of the teams in the Xiayun rural interview and survey project. This group's survey scope is not confined to the traditional "rural village"; beyond the famous Taiwanese farming township of Erlin in Changhua, it also follows a concern for Taiwan's primary industries southwest along the Changhua coast, visiting the inshore aquaculture fisheries of Fangyuan and Wanggong.

The aquaculture industry in the Wanggong area of Changhua has a long history and is one of Taiwan's important traditional industries, still making a huge contribution to annual economic output today. According to local elder Mr. Lin Lian-zong, the genealogy of the Lin family of Shepu Lin Cuo records that in the 12th year of the Chongzhen reign of the Ming dynasty (AD 1639), the 9th-generation ancestor of the Wanggong Lin family crossed the sea from Tong'an in Fujian to Xiabao Village, Shenkeng Fort, Changhua (Wanggong Village), where they cleared land, fished the sea, and hauled nets. Similar dates can be found in the "Overview of Taichung Prefecture": "The oyster farming industry originated 250 years ago when oyster farming methods from the opposite shore were first introduced to Wanggong Village under the Erlin Branch Office." Regardless of which historical source is used, the history of oyster and clam farming along the Changhua coast can be traced back to around the 17th century. ^₁

For hundreds of years, this long stretch of tidal flats has nourished generations of ancestors. Even today, in the 21st century, the coastal aquaculture industry still makes an important contribution to Taiwan's economic output, in no way inferior to popular emerging industries.

According to statistics on fishery production volume and value from the Fisheries Agency in the 97th year of the Republic of China (2008), Changhua County alone produced as much as 3030 metric tons of oysters, with a total value of more than NT$230 million, while clam production reached 8468 metric tons, worth more than NT$370 million². These figures do not even include transactions in the informal economic sector, such as private businesses, gathering, subsistence activities, and traditional market sales that are not under fiscal and tax supervision. Just like the scene we saw in the alleys of Wanggong fishing village, where aunties gathered around a low table, chatting while skillfully prying open oyster shells to dig out the meat: it is these economic activities that hold up half the sky of Taiwan's prosperous economy and play an important role in Taiwan's social safety net in every respect, yet they are often misunderstood as an outdated, uncompetitive sunset industry, or as yesterday's memories whose gradual disappearance is no great loss.

That said, in this age of advanced internet access, it is not difficult for readers to obtain the statistics mentioned above. But to understand how, behind these enormous numbers, the coastal aquaculture industry supported the survival of Taiwan's fishing villages over two or three hundred years, safeguarded the livelihoods of Taiwan's fishermen, and shaped a unique rural social network and way of life, real, slow, and meticulous interview and survey work is indispensable source material for understanding.

During the survey process, the "Xiayun Erlin/Fangyuan Interview and Survey Group" left behind many precious written and visual records on these questions. For example, A-yuan, who makes his living transporting oysters, pointed out sharply: "Our family has seventeen people in all, and we all depend on transporting oysters for our meals. If we lived in the city, it would be impossible to support seventeen people." (See Chen Ning, "Xiayun Notes: A First Visit to the Fangyuan Oyster Farming Industry.") Or when visiting the egret habitat, Sister Yue-ying of the Changhua Environmental Alliance, who was leading the tour, offered this wisdom: "Let the stranded little egret warm itself back up by sunbathing. Animals should be allowed to follow nature; try not to intervene artificially." (See Lin Ming-hua, "Dacheng Xigang: In Search of the Egret Grove.") This serves as the best Taiwanese footnote to "Heaven and earth are not benevolent; they treat all things as straw dogs," and is also a most precious lesson in ecological education.

Today, as mainstream public opinion in Taiwan pursues high technology and high output value, these voices from the tidal flats, carefully recorded by the participants, can complement ancient texts and government statistics, helping us understand more fully the fishing village economy and coastal ecology that developmentalism has deliberately forgotten.

Below, the Xiayun Erlin/Fangyuan Interview and Survey Group invites you to walk with us into a fishing village in the height of summer 2010 and understand the real current situation of fishing village life. With the warmth of a local, Xin-yun writes about the extraordinary colors of fishing village life; Yi-jun and Jia-ling describe in detail the emotion of encountering a fishing village up close for the first time; Chen Ning and Yu-ying each explain in detail the production chain of the oyster industry, carefully introducing every stage of oyster farming; Xiang-lin and Ming-hua share the surprising journey of visiting the Dacheng egret grove on the fourth day of the survey; and Guan-ming wrote a new poem for the planned site of the Kuokuang Petrochemical project, giving voice to the tiny shrimp and crabs so as to resist that great beast called Kuokuang Petrochemical.

In addition to written records, fellow citizen journalist Zheng Bi-wei compiled and edited the survey footage into "Come Quickly and See the National Land You Subscribed to Through National Trust: The Zhuoshui River Mouth," leaving traces of every step for the Erlin/Fangyuan Interview and Survey Group. After the survey ended, Brother Zheng continued conducting interviews and visual documentation in the southwestern corner of Changhua. The itinerary he provided can also serve as a reference for friends interested in learning about Fangyuan and the Eighth Naphtha Cracker issue to conduct their own explorations.

This is not the most precise survey report. Its contents may be "the oyster industry feeds our family of seventeen," "we saved a little egret," or "we dug up some wild white clams with our own hands in the intertidal zone." It is precisely these blurry and warm numbers and descriptions that moved us. After all, a survey is not just following a schedule. Through the survey process, we explored together a shared connection from understanding to action, from the individual to the collective, and after the survey, the Xiayun Erlin/Fangyuan Interview and Survey Group also coalesced into a group with even greater momentum and more creative direct action.

We also hope to share this experience with more readers, turning back to the traditional wisdom of farming and fishing villages and the courage of farmers and fishermen's lives to seek out sparks for an alternative future.

Xiayun Notes: A First Visit to the Fangyuan Oyster Farming Industry

Oyster farming is an important economic activity along Taiwan's western coast, and as coastal landforms and environments vary from place to place, many different forms of farming have developed. On the vast intertidal mudflats off the coast of Fangyuan, one can see row after row of stakes driven into the ground by oyster farmers using wood or cement, with strings of oysters hung between each row. This is the method commonly known as the "horizontal hanging" farming method.

To transport oysters from the sea to land, oyster farmers went from the earliest carrying by manpower, to hauling by ox carts, and in recent times most oyster farmers have switched to driving self-assembled three-wheeled vehicles, creating a special coastal scene. In particular, in the Fanwa settlement outside Putian Temple in Fangyuan, some households still preserve the tradition of carrying oysters by ox cart, which is now a local feature found nowhere else in Taiwan.

How are oysters farmed?

Generally, during the process of shucking oyster shells, better-quality "seed shells" are selected for farming. These seed shells are then washed, drilled, tied into strings, and tied one by one onto oyster racks on the mudflats. Every year around the 7th and 8th lunar months and in the 10th lunar month, oyster spat begin to appear in large numbers, then drift with the tides in search of places to attach and continue growing. At this time, oyster farmers must check one by one whether the previously tied oyster shells have spat attached and whether the attachment rate is high. After about a year of farming, they can be harvested, though some oysters are farmed longer.

Washing oyster shells is a step found only in oyster farming areas north of the Zhuoshui River, and this procedure can reduce impurities in the oysters. In the Fangyuan area in particular, besides supplying ordinary oysters, small-sized oysters are also specially provided for oyster omelet vendors. Only with the extra step of washing away impurities can older people avoid misjudging the oysters when sorting them by size due to poor eyesight.

How are oysters sold?

Brother A-yuan, whom we visited, is one of the top wholesale oyster distributors in the Changhua area. He explained to us that when purchasing from oyster farmers, pricing is calculated by the "oyster basket," buying oysters that have not yet been shucked, and then hiring people to help shuck them and pick out the oyster meat.

Brother A-yuan said that when he was little, as soon as he stepped out the door, the whole street was helping his family shuck oysters. Although the total number of people doing oyster shucking work has now decreased, for older people this is still work that is less physically demanding and can bring in income, earning about 4 or 5 hundred dollars a day, so there is no fear of not finding people to shuck oysters.

After the oyster meat is shucked, middlemen buy it in whole batches and resell it to ordinary market vendors. Although oysters can be harvested all year round, their pricing follows the price set in the Dongshi area of Chiayi, changing with the cost of harvesting oyster baskets and seasonal variation. When typhoons hit, oyster farmers inevitably suffer losses, not to mention the situation in recent years in which industrial pollution has frequently appeared and entire batches of oysters cannot be sold at all, leaving hardworking oyster farmers, in addition to depending on the weather, with even harder-to-control man-made factors.

The oyster wholesale business can be said to have been built up single-handedly by Brother A-yuan's father, who sought out middlemen willing to buy oyster meat and built relationships, accumulating this scale over several decades, with the second generation continuing through three brothers. Brother A-yuan said that their family has seventeen people in all, all depending on oyster wholesaling for their meals: "If we lived in the city, it would be impossible to support seventeen people." And beyond the business of Brother A-yuan's family, the industrial network formed by oyster farming has also fed tens of thousands of coastal households for generations.

However, after the Sixth Naphtha Cracker Plant was built, not only air pollution but also the natural movement of coastal drifting sand was blocked by the industrial zone, causing the entire coastal landform to change. In many places, large amounts of mud that could not be carried away by seawater accumulated, affecting coastal ecology and oyster farming as well. But what worries oyster farmers even more is that if the Kuokuang Petrochemical project is built and operated in the future, using the current wetlands for land reclamation, the oyster farming industry along the Fangyuan coast may even disappear completely, and the catastrophe it would bring would be completely beyond comparison with the Sixth Naphtha Cracker...

How are oyster shells used?

Through Brother A-yuan's explanation, we finally clarified a long-standing question and understood the source of the "seed oysters" used in oyster farming. But aside from the small number of oyster shells kept for reuse, do most of the other shells have any use?

Having grown up in Tainan, when visiting historic sites such as Anping Fort and Eternal Golden Castle, I often saw that people in the past mixed oyster shells into mud and sand and other materials as building materials, but after all, that was several hundred years ago. How modern people actually handle large quantities of oyster shells, the answer lies in the place we were about to visit next.

Walking into Mr. Lin's factory in Wanggong, the first thing that meets the eye is oyster shells piled up like small mountains. Mr. Lin said that there are not many oyster shell processing plants like his in all of Taiwan, only five, and the oyster shells from the Changhua area are all concentrated at his factory for processing, taking in an average of 1700 metric tons of oyster shells each month, with usage at around 1400 metric tons.

After oyster shells are sun-dried, they are then processed by machine, first crushed and then subjected to high-temperature baking before they can be made into various final products. Oyster shell powder is rich in minerals and can be used as fertilizer to adjust the pH of soil, and can also be made into animal feed, which is further divided into two types: flake form and powder form. The flake form can be used as feed for chickens, ducks, and pigeons, while the powder form is suitable for mixing into feed for pigs, eels, and other animals.

Mr. Lin said that the oyster shell powder produced by his factory is currently mostly supplied to several major domestic feed companies as raw material, such as Fwusow and Charoen Pokphand, both of which buy from him. In addition, Formosa Plastics also buys oyster shell powder from him to make organic fertilizer.

What originally seemed like unremarkable oyster shells, after processing, allow the minerals they contain to re-enter the food chain cycle. It is also hoped that this industrial network derived from oyster farming can continue to flourish endlessly along the Changhua coast.

A Blurry Fable: Standing on the Fangyuan Wetlands Looking at the Sixth Naphtha Cracker

In the small settlement called "Fanwa" near Putian Temple in Fangyuan Township, most residents make their living from oyster farming. But what this vast mudflat gives to the coastal people is not only the natural conditions suitable for oyster farming, but also the abundant clams, crabs, and other seafood beneath the mud, allowing villagers to earn some extra income through gathering.

Squeezed onto the assembled vehicles, after about a 20-minute ride, the group arrived at the vast wetlands outside Putian Temple. Several aunties had already been working on the mud for a long time, each with a bucket full of clams beside them, and we followed suit, beginning to feel around in the mud.

Very quickly, everyone had something to show for it, holding high the clams they had dug up with their own hands and exclaiming again and again. Besides feeling the freshness and excitement of this never-before-experienced activity, there was also a touch of emotion: it turned out that beneath the seemingly ordinary mud there really was such astonishing vitality.

However, although the proverb says, "Gathering clams and washing your pants at the same time, one act serves two purposes," in fact, under the blazing sun, with your body crawling on mudflats where the tide has not yet receded, feeling with both hands for wild white clams and red-mouth clams hidden in the sand is no easy task. Seawater reflects the sun's radiation, and combined with rising water vapor, working at sea is much harder than on land. In less than two hours, although everyone was still reluctant to stop, their stamina began to decline, so they had to prepare to go ashore.

On the way back, looking toward the opposite bank of the Zhuoshui River mouth, under the bright sunlight, the shadow of the Sixth Naphtha Cracker loomed faintly, like a blurry fable, reminding us that even as we enjoyed this fascinating experience, we should not forget to stay vigilant. Perhaps the land beneath our feet may one day become a replica of the Sixth Naphtha Cracker...

As I write this survey note, I recall a passage written by Teacher Wu Ming-yi in the article "Reviewing the Future":

Many of the scholars reviewing the Kuokuang Petrochemical project must never have jumped into the sea to swim, lain on the ground to watch fiddler crabs, or stealthily approached migratory birds in the marshes with binoculars. ... Without these experiences, how can they review the future for us?

If you had once walked barefoot on the wetlands off the coast of Fangyuan, while watching the Sixth Naphtha Cracker in the distance, its enormous smokestacks day and night emitting highly toxic gases, while feeling for clams beneath the mud, with waterbirds flying past between the oyster racks from time to time, how could you bear to let a petrochemical plant built by land reclamation turn this natural treasure that feeds countless coastal people into nothing?

And having experienced all of this ourselves, even if only for a few short hours, we have become all the more determined to protect this pure land. <Part One, to be continued>

¹Source: Taiwan Oyster Farming: Wanggong Leads the Way, by Hong Yi-ping (section chief of the Changhua District Fishermen's Association), Fisheries Agency Fisheries Extension, issue 265, http://www.aptcm.com/fish/km.nsf/ByUNID/B3E35A6DA96270834825750B00123BE5?opendocument , retrieved on 2010/11/29.
²Republic of China 97th Year Taiwan-Fujian Region Fisheries Statistical Yearbookhttp://www.fa.gov.tw/pages/list.aspx?Node=242&Type=1&Index=4, retrieved on 2010/11/29.