A postcard from Taiwan Photos and stories from the book Tajwan. Piękna wyspa...

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Another iconic product is pineapples. I might give some of you a culture shock, perhaps even an existential one – pineapples don't grow on trees, but on bushes roughly waist-high. Taiwan has bred dozens of varieties, including the famous "milk pineapple" and "diamond pineapple." A plantation owner who caught me camping in his field while I was on my way to an aboriginal festival will tell you about the specifics of their cultivation. Mr. Chen grows pineapples in their heartland, the Pingtung area. It's not an easy piece of bread (rice) – the margins on purchases are razor-thin. The bush grows for 16–24 months. While it can produce a second crop, the fruit is smaller and therefore unsaleable. An interesting episode was China's suspension of pineapple imports in 2021. It was interpreted as punishment for the assumption of power by President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic People's Party (DPP). At the time, as much as 90% of Taiwanese pineapple exports were going to China. The punishment backfired… spectacularly. President Tsai initiated a social media campaign encouraging Taiwanese people to eat more pineapples. Japan joined the effort. Within just four days of announcing the boycott, foreign (mainly from Japan) and domestic orders exceeded the total amount of pineapples originally intended for China – over 40,000 tons. My joke that growers should regularly contribute to the CCP's red envelope, for which Mr. Chen dismissed the phrase "partially ridiculous" for engaging in similar campaigns more frequently. The joke intentionally touched on the sensitive political issue of imports to the PRC being interpreted as, and in fact, a form of CCP influence on the outcome of the democratic process on the island. The idea is to increase the volume of purchases in order to "revitalize" the agricultural electorate of the Kuomintang, which is accused by its political rivals of collaborating with the communists from Beijing.

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