Nansha Lu crispy plums are emerald green and tender, and one bite delivers a crisp and delicious taste.

This is how the story began.

In the summer of 2009, Morakot arrived. Even before it made landfall, it had already brought torrential rain to Taiwan. Hillsides collapsed, landslide-dammed lakes burst their banks, and what the typhoon left behind was countless broken families, heartbroken relatives, and a ravaged landscape.

A week after Typhoon Morakot, I got a call from Xiaofei, asking whether I could go to the disaster area, take a look, write some reports, and bring back some photographs, so that the disaster area, which was gradually losing media attention, could keep having new information brought out. What was that new information? At that moment, really, the new information was: What do the affected people need? What does the government intend to do?

But I did not start heading south until October. During that time, we were busy preparing to run the Morakot Independent News Network, a website that no one was optimistic about but that has so far been running for more than two years and, with the reconstruction regulations, is about to enter its third year. I was listed as managing editor, which means "managing," and every week there was a whole series of phone-interview lists; today I would interview farmers in Shanlin, tomorrow perhaps residents of Jiaxian. In short, during those days my life was spent busily shuttling between resettlement camps and phone interviews.

Then I was busy preparing for graduate school entrance exams, and after getting in as I had hoped, I seriously began thinking about finding a job to support myself. But before I threw myself into work, my life changed first. Starting in January 2010, I became someone's girlfriend, except that this "someone" happened to be a resident of Namasia, which had been hit by the disaster at the time.

In April, Xiaofei asked me whether I wanted to take on the reporting work in Namasia. I hesitated for a moment, but the one who encouraged me to take the job was actually my boyfriend. Looking back on it several times, the reason he "pushed his girlfriend into the fire pit" was probably that he felt many voices from the disaster area had never been able to reach the outside world. So I became 88news's correspondent stationed in Namasia. To put it plainly, while I was a reporter, I was also the girlfriend of a disaster victim. But whose girlfriend I was is not the point; the point is that I did not betray my work.

All right, with the backstory finished, it is time to get to the main subject: I am here to sell plums, specifically the plums made by my boyfriend's mother. I have said all this because, as a reporter, or as the author of an article, on the premise of cheating neither the old nor the young, I think I should make things clear to everyone: the crunchy plums you are now seeing come from my boyfriend's mother. But we did not deliberately limit this to the boyfriend's mother; it is simply that everything has just started, and the people around us are still watching.

• Maidar, happily counting money, but this smile is the result of a whole year of hard work

My boyfriend's mother, referred to below as Maidar, is a descendant of Han Chinese who was adopted by a Bunun person in Namasia. From the time I have known her, she has been busy every day, working at a workshop opened by the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families in the tribe, delivering boxed meals, doing handicrafts, cutting grass, raising chickens, and farming. She is pretty much the all-around traditional woman.

Because her father-in-law died young, after marriage Maidar and her husband had to shoulder the education and living expenses of two children, two younger brothers-in-law, and two younger sisters-in-law. The two of them often worked up in the mountains from Monday to Friday, and on weekends the couple would ride motorcycles down the mountain to work as formwork carpenters. I often heard people in the tribe tease her: "Maidar, you really are hyperactive, you just can't sit still!" "Aiyo! This dahbuh suih!" (Bunun: money lover.)

After the typhoon, many kind-hearted people wanted to help the tribe rebuild. During this period there was never a lack of concern and support from all sectors. But we kept thinking that outside resources and assistance will always come to an end one day. If we cannot carve out a path of our own during this time, what will we still be able to do after it all ends? In this tribe that the government has declared will have no opportunities for thirty or fifty years.

Because of this idea, last year we began trial-selling crunchy plums. Everyone's response was good, and they gave us quite a few suggestions. This spring, we decided to continue launching "Nansalu Crunchy Plums," replacing last year's jars that leaked easily and strictly requiring Maidar, when making the crunchy plums, to first let us measure the weight and proportion of every ingredient. These were all new attempts for the tribal women, because in the past making crunchy plums was done "by feel," and because of that the flavor would vary.

There is another key point: exploitation.

I once did an interview about plum prices. A Bunun person responsible for collecting plums on the mountain on behalf of a manufacturer told me that at most he earned one yuan in labor per jin of plums. The manufacturer bought at nine yuan per jin, one yuan went to the hired worker responsible for transport, and what the farmers who personally harvested a whole orchard of tender green plums got was the low purchase price.

Some people might ask, why not make processed plums?

This is another problem in the entire production and marketing chain. Plum-processing equipment costs anywhere from 100,000 to 80,000, which ordinary farmers cannot afford. The government subsidizes the purchase of plum-processing equipment, but these subsidies go to production and marketing groups. Those who have not joined a production and marketing group are left at the very bottom of the chain, and unfortunately those who have not joined a production and marketing group make up the vast majority.

Of course, at this stage there are also so-called plum extract and plum extract tablets. The same problem: no equipment. Or, no technique. Is there a chance to learn? Yes, but unfortunately the time the instructors come is the time when ordinary families all have to go work in the fields, and unfortunately this information, which public departments ought to make public, is still in the hands of a few. When information is not public, these farmers and women who have no power to decide are exploited year after year at the very bottom.

From last year to this year, we have been trying to build a Nansalu brand, so that when people think of crunchy plums they think of Nansalu, just as when they think of Penghu they think of sunshine, beaches, waves, and cacti.

This road has only just begun. We are trying to talk with the women in the tribe and trying to express the path we want to take, but for now this path still includes only me, my boyfriend, and Maidar.

We are also very clear that before we have achieved even a little, it is hard to persuade others to join us, so we had no choice but to start with our own family. We try to persuade Maidar and Maidar's husband, Dahu. As for the rest, we can only hope that when the women see us packing and shipping goods at full tilt, they will gradually come to identify with us and understand that "it is not just about selling out this year's batch; it has to continue year after year."

Of course, because Namasia is a post-disaster reconstruction area, some friends may still associate this place with disaster area, disaster victims, and endless disaster news. But we quietly think to ourselves that we want every friend who tastes Maidar's Nansalu crunchy plums to know that the reason the crunchy plums taste good comes from the maker's craftsmanship and heartfelt care. Buying is support and recognition, not pity or charity.

What is craftsmanship?

Maidar's crunchy plums come from a plum orchard where no chemical fertilizer or pesticide has been used. From a plum orchard wreathed in mist and clouds, she picks tender green plums one by one. At this stage, with no machine available, Maidar must first pour coarse salt into the pile of plums and rub hard to remove the fine fuzz on the plums. Next, she cracks each plum open one by one, so that the plum's own astringent taste can be released during the subsequent soaking in salt water, and at the same time so that it can absorb more flavor when sugar water is added at the end.

Of course, the process does not jump straight to the end. After soaking in salt water, the baby plums must be soaked one by one in ice-cold mountain water for several hours, during which the water is changed constantly (this is the advantage of living in the mountains: fresh and clean water is available). Then the plums are put into mesh bags and dehydrated.

During this dehydration period, Maidar or the other women have to do multiple tasks at once: cook sugar water and let it cool, and finally bottle the sugar water and plums together, and only then do they become jar after jar of gleaming green crunchy plums.

After two years of trying like this, honestly we never imagined we had to reach any particular scale. We just thought about letting more people eat natural and delicious food, letting everyone feel the care contained in every crunchy plum. The biggest goal is probably to hope that, as the years accumulate, we can influence more producers, so that everyone does not become the very bottom of the plum industry, forever able only to look at plum prices and sigh.

• Nansalu Crunchy Plums. The picture is last year's "archive photo." This year, because of the weather, the plums have not yet entered the harvest season!

 

Good crunchy plums, aren't you going to buy them?

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