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Pigs roam free to the delight of
visitors in Yilan
By Loa Iok-sin / Staff Reporter
A woman visiting a pig farm in Yilan County has her picture taken with a group
of piglets on Friday.
Photo: Loa Iok-sin, Taipei Times
“Pigs are an important livestock in the Han culture,” Huang Cheng-teh (黃正德), the
owner of Tianshan Farm in Sansing Township (三星), Yilan County, told a group of
visitors on Friday.
“Take the Chinese character jia [家, home] for example. It’s basically the
ideogram shi [豕], meaning ‘pig’ under a roof, because for the ancient Han
people, pigs were an important source of income for the family,” he said.
“The character hao [豪, wealthy], also includes the ideogram shi at the bottom,
as pigs were the foundation for becoming wealthy in ancient China,” Huang said.
All smiles, the visitors seemed to enjoy Huang’s lecture on the connection
between pigs and humans in traditional culture. Though some may have thought
Huang is an academic specializing in traditional “Han” culture, he’s actually
been a pig farmer all his life and the “classroom” where he lectures about “pig
culture” is a converted pigpen.
Aside from listening to Huang’s lecture about pigs, visitors could also play
with pigs and take pictures with piglets, make pottery pigs, visit a pig farm
museum, make a specialty pastry with locally produced scallions, pick specialty
fruits, ride a canoe in a creek flowing in front of the farm and stay a night at
the farm.
Located amid rice paddies and orchards, the farm makes for the perfect
agricultural tourism attraction. Facing difficult times about a decade ago,
Huang made the difficult decision to turn his piggery into a leisure farm.
“Taiwan’s entry into the WTO hit the entire agricultural sector hard,” Huang
said, the smile on his face retreating. “For the pig farmers, it means more
imported pork and less export of pork products from Taiwan.”
Pig farmers had already suffered a serious crisis just years before Taiwan’s
admission into the WTO in 2001.
“In 1997, Japan — Taiwan’s major pork export destination — declared a ban on
pork products from Taiwan because of a massive outbreak of foot-and-mouth
disease and the once prosperous pig farming industry went straight to hell,”
Huang said.
Before the outbreak, about 40 percent of pork products in Japan were imported
from Taiwan. Even after Taiwan was removed from the list of countries with
foot-and-mouth, exports never fully recovered, as Japanese importers had found
other sources.
“I only had two choices: Give up, or transform my pig farm,” Huang said.
Huang chose the latter option, but the change wasn’t easy.
Traditionally, pig farmers are considered people of lower social status, as pig
farms are usually associated with negative adjectives such as “dirty” and
“smelly” and people did not believe that there was any way to turn a pig farm
into a leisure farm, Huang said.
“I probably would have failed if I had only sought the transformation of my own
pig farm, but what I did was involve everyone in the village. Here, visitors can
buy a package tour from me to visit my farm, pick fruit from trees, canoe on the
creek, make scallion cakes with locally produced scallion,” Huang said. “But you
know what? I still only run my pig farm and the rest of the activities are run
by others in the village.”
Package tours are more attractive to visitors and tours like the one he offers
allow everyone in the village to share the benefits, he said, which in turn
generates support from other villagers for his project.
Tea farmer Yu Huei-chen (游輝真) of Datong Township (大同) also felt the impact of
globalization and transformed his 4 hectare farm in response to the challenge.
Although tea has been planted in the hilly areas of Yilan for a long time now,
most Yilan tea growers were forced to give up their farms as the export market
shrank and lower-cost tea from other countries took much of the domestic market.
“I was first just a tea farmer, then I became also a tea merchant, and now I am
a tea farmer, a tea merchant and a leisure farm resort owner all at the same
time,” Yu said.
Yu’s tea farm used to be closed to the public, and his sole business was growing
and selling tea.
Now, however, people can visit his tea farm, experience tealeaf-picking, enjoy a
“tealeaf feast,” buy his award-winning tea from the souvenir shop and stay a
night at his country-style homestay. And if you wish, Yu said, he would be happy
to chat with you about everything related to Taiwanese tea.
The tealeaf feast is quite unique, visitors having lunch in the restaurant on
the farm told the Taipei Times.
“You can smell the scent of tea from this pot of chicken soup from afar, because
it’s cooked with tea leaves,” a visitor said, pointing to a pot of chicken soup
on the table. “When you taste it, it actually tastes just like a delicious
chicken soup at first, but then, a few seconds after you swallow the soup,
there’s again this scent and aftertaste of tea in your mouth.”
“Very cool, very special. I really like it,” the visitor said.
Although local governments are trying to develop leisure farm resorts to help
farmers transform to meet the challenges from globalization, Yilan has been one
of the most successful, because of a coordinated marketing strategy put out by
both farm resort operators and the county government.
“There are leisure farm resorts everywhere across the country, but only in Yilan
can you find government-certified leisure farm resorts,” said Roy Ko (柯瑞杰),
general manager of the Yilan Leisure Farming Development Association, an
alliance of leisure farm resort operators in the county. “All certified resorts
went through a very strict evaluation process and are regularly inspected, so
visitors feel safer to go to these certified farms.”
In addition, Ko said that one of the strengths of agricultural tourism in Yilan
is its close distance to Taipei.
“At the moment, our objective is to attract more visitors from Japan who are
coming through Songshan Airport in Taipei as the airport establishes more
regular flight routes with Japan,” Ko said. “Japanese visitors can easily get to
Yilan via the freeway after they arrive in Taipei.”
While other counties and cities may soon be competing with Yilan, Ko said they
are trying to expand more into the cultural side of the farming sector in Yilan.
“In Yilan, many Hakka live side-by-side with Kavalan and Atayal Aborigines.
Their cultures have merged into something interesting and unique,” he said.
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