The Taiwan History of Burning Tobacco Leaves - Firing the State, Hope in the Post-Tobacco Era Special Feature Introduction

The tobacco business in Taiwan has long been strictly controlled by the state and has always been a very mysterious agricultural undertaking. When ordinary people see young tobacco plants, they think they are just a larger version of bok choy; by the time the tobacco leaves grow past two meters, their first reaction is to step closer and take a group photo.

From the Japanese colonial period until Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), the government promoted the tobacco leaf industry through a monopoly system. The state was the tobacco farmer's eternal boss; only when the government nodded could tobacco farmers plant tobacco, and tobacco leaves could only be sold to the government, with no power to negotiate prices.

Tobacco farmers created enormous wealth for the government. Former Vice President Chen Cheng once said a classic line - "Non-smokers are good people, smokers are good citizens," which summed up in one sentence how important tobacco leaf revenue was to the national treasury. The laboring figures cultivating tobacco became the local culture of rural tobacco districts, and the Osaka-style tobacco barns used to flue-cure tobacco leaves, together with traditional shared houses (sanheyuan), formed a distinctive spatial landscape.

However, when the WTO brought the impact of globalization to Taiwan, the state chose to abandon tobacco farmers. Tobacco farmers could only encourage themselves from within, taking the mood of "firing the state" onto the road of transformation. Stories of resistance to globalization were written one by one into songs and sung as classics. The magic of tobacco leaves brought a remarkable journey to rural Taiwan.

More than ten years have passed since then, and the tobacco town of Meinong has even stirred up a liberation frenzy of the "post-tobacco era," proving that without relying on tobacco or the government, one can still plant oneself back into the land, support a family, and hold one's head high. Farewell to tobacco leaves, liberation for tobacco farmers - the Taiwan history written by the tobacco leaf industry is something you cannot afford not to know.

Read the "Firing the State! Hope in the Post-Tobacco Era" special feature