As the first rays of the morning sun break through the clouds and strike the crystalline white salt pans of Chiayi county, the salt farmers at the Putai Saltworks have nearly finished a day's work. Baskets of salt sit in the shallow salt pans. At nine or ten, the farmers stow their tools in the little huts, which also serve as shelters from the rain. On a typical day they are up at three or four in the morning, or even earlier, to prepare the salt pans or rake, collect, and carry salt. They must finish before the sun comes up because the burning glare on the open salt pans is unbearable, particularly during the summer. "The water in the pans is hot enough to bum your feet. The money we make is hard-earned," says Mr. Tsai, a salt farmer who has worked at Putai for more than thirty years.
Although still in his early fifties, Tsai is one of the "young" salt farmers. "I belong to the last generation of salt farmers. When I retire, there will be no one left," he says. Tsai's skin is dark and wrinkled by the sun, and like most salt farmers, he is very thin owing to the long hours of manual labor. At present, the average age among salt farmers is around fifty-six. Male farmers are now required to retire at sixty and female workers at fifty-five. The occupation is dying out in Taiwan, and will probably disappear within the next decade.
Tsai works in one of Taiwan's five state-run saltworks. Each operates an area of salt pans broken up into sections of a few hundred acres, and consisting of a series of numerous crystalization pans. The government also operates a salt refinery which produces salt by means of the ion membrane exchange method.
The origins of this system and the island's salt industry can be traced back more than three hundred years. In the mid-seventeenth century, Cheng Cheng-kung, or Koxinga as he is commonly known, retreated to Taiwan after the fall of the Ming dynasty. Chen Yung-hua, one of his generals, disliked the taste of decocted salt which is produced by boiling sea water until nothing is left but a salt residue. Instead, he preferred salt produced using the solar evaporation method. In 1665 he had salt pans constructed at today's Laikou, located in Tainan county in southern Taiwan. During the Ching dynasty, six more saltworks were developed. When Liu Ming-chuan was governor of Taiwan in the late nineteenth century, he also served as salt supervisor for the province and established a government salt bureau in Taipei, with a branch in Tainan. Despite his bureaucratic innovations, the island was only able to produce 25,000 tons of salt annually, not enough for local consumption, so additional amounts were imported from the mainland.
The Japanese occupied Taiwan in 1895 and denationalized the government salt monopoly. As a result, salt fields deteriorated and poor-quality salt was produced. Eventually salt prices fluctuated drastically because of the emergence of a private monopoly. The Japanese government nationalized the salt industry again in 1899. In those days there were more than 400,000 acres of salt pans and gross production reached 460,000 tons in 1943.
Retired salt farmers, who gather at the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy at the Chiku Saltworks, like to recall how the Japanese managed the salt industry. The Japanese, they say, dug fish ponds so that salt farmers could raise fish to supplement their low incomes. Today the fish ponds are gone, and side jobs are difficult to find. The Japanese were very strict. "We would stand patiently in line to have our salt weighed. We didn't dare even go to the toilet," says a recently retired farmer, who began working in the salt pans during the Japanese occupation.
The modern Taiwan salt industry is built on what was left by the Japanese. After retrocession, the government took over operation of the saltworks. However, many salt pans were left untended and several typhoons caused further deterioration. As a result, salt production decreased dramatically. Two of the six saltworks recovered from the Japanese have since been abandoned, leaving only four. The Peimen, Chiku, and Tainan saltworks are located in Tainan county, and the Putai Salt works in Chiayi county. A fifth, the Hsiyuan Saltworks on Kinmen, was constructed later.
The majority of the island's salt pans are clustered on the coast of Tainan county in southwest Taiwan where the land is low and flat and the climate remains relatively constant year round. Salt farming is also possible where the Chiayi plain meets the sea. The land is flat, forming broad tidelands and shallow coastal waters with an abundance of sandbars and lagoons, areas ideally suited for salt pans and fish ponds.
The dry climates of the Middle East, North Africa, Central America, and West Australia make them major salt producers. But with monsoons and typhoons every summer, Taiwan does not possess an ideal climate. Between May and September, when the sun is strong, there is a high level of ambient humidity which slows evaporation. The high season for salt production is from October to May, when it is sunny and dry. Thus salt farmers divide the whole year into three seasons: March to May is the high season, October to February is the slow season, and June to September the off season. Forty-five percent of Taiwan's annual production comes from the high season and 47 percent from the slow season because it is longer.
The industry is dependent upon the weather. Plenty of sunshine means salt; rain means none. But temperature, wind direction, water salinity and the type of crystalization pan can also affect the quality and quantity of salt produced. Salt farmers are especially sensitive to the weather. A sixty-three-year-old retired salt farmer, who still helps out occasionally, says: "Making salt by evaporation is in the hands of heaven. Too much rain in the past two years has meant poor yields. But this year there are more sunny days and the wind is from the north. The yields have been good and our earnings are better."
Though the salt pans are idle during typhoon season, the salt farmers cannot rest. "We are paid only for six months of work, but the job keeps us busy all year round," says Hsiao Kung-chung, a salt farmer. He adds, "Even in the off season, we still have to take care of the pans, otherwise, earthworms may bore holes in them and typhoons may knock down the ridges between them. Just maintaining them is as time-consuming as gathering the salt."
The type of crystalization pan utilized also plays an important role. Pans can be divided into two types: clay or tile, depending on the material used in surfacing them. The earliest pans in Taiwan were surfaced with tile from Fukien. Today the tiles come from the Taiwan Tobacco & Wine Monopoly Bureau. During the Japanese occupation, tile was scarce, so many pans were surfaced with clay. Of the four saltworks, Putai and Chiku are predominantly clay, while Peimen and Tainan are largely tile.
Salt farmer Tsai, who once worked the clay pans, complains that his income decreased after he was assigned to tile pans even though he put in the same number of hours. There are advantages to both types. A tile pan can produce a yield of salt every ten days, compared with eleven to twelve days for clay pans. After each yield is collected, tile pans need only be washed down with fresh water, whereas clay pans must be leveled and smoothed each time. Though tile pans are smaller, they require greater expenditures of cash and labor to produce salt, which is still inferior to that produced on clay pans.
Salt pans are measured in units called fu. The size of a fu of tile pans is not standardized because most were constructed before the unit of measure was developed. Roughly speaking, though, it is about one to two chias (about 100 or 200 acres), while a fu of clay pans is equal to five chias (about 500 acres). Besides a series of crystalization pans, each fu also contains sea gates, and feeder and drainage ditches for sea water intake and waste water removal. In the old days, farmers used tread pumps to supply the pans with sea water. Now mechanical water pumps make the work a lot easier. Each household is assigned a fu of salt pan, which requires the labor of about four people.
One fu can produce five tons of salt each yield, which is worth approximately US$200. With an optimum of three yields per month, a salt farmer can conceivably earn around US$550 each month. If yields are poor, workers will be paid a "guaranteed income" of nearly US$370 per month by the government. However, if the farmer consistently produces less than that amount for several months, his contract may not be renewed the following year.
Salt farmers are either contracted or hired. Each government-run salt works enters into contractual agreements with workers, after which they are assigned salt pans. They pay no rents or fees, and all equipment is supplied by the saltworks. However, the salt produced belongs to the government monopoly; workers cannot keep or sell the salt they produce. Instead they are paid according to the size of their yields. Contract workers can work together with their family, or they may hire workers.
Salt farmers say they work twenty-four hours for every dollar they earn. It seems they have always been poor. According to a 1957 government report on the five saltworks: "Salt farmers work very hard, but are even poorer than fishermen. They don't have much in the way of vegetables and no oil for their meals, staving off hunger by eating dried sweet potato chips with rice and salt. Except in Chiku and Wushulin, their dwellings are poor, the worst being those in Peimen and Tainan, where the roofs leak whenever it rains. Whole families crowd into small, damp houses, providing ideal conditions for the spread of disease. Their clothes are in rags. The only places for children to play are in salt marshes. When we first arrived in a salt farming village, we thought it was deserted."
In the late 1950s, the average family engaged in salt farming had eight members. A ton of salt went for about US$43 on the local market. Of that price 3.3 percent, or US$1.50 per ton, was paid in labor costs. It was impossible to support a family on such limited resources so salt farmers had to moonlight. However jobs were difficult to find in remote seaside villages. Some of the deserted salt fields could have been turned into commercial fish ponds, but poor farmers had no money to invest.
A salt farmer's life is a hard one, and there are occupational hazards. In the old days, dysentery and diarrhea were widespread because of unsanitary conditions and malnutrition. Drinking water was scarce because there was a lack of fresh water sources nearby, and insufficient land transportation required that potable water be brought in by boat. If the weather was bad, the boats could not make their deliveries.
Daily contact with salt water also makes salt farmers vulnerable to eye, foot, and skin diseases. Salt farmers fear sores on the leg or foot because working in the brine of the salt pans can aggravate them. Nearly 80 percent of all farmers have had foot diseases before. And because they have to carry heavy loads every day, the farmers tend to have foot and shoulder problems in old age.
Today salt farmers live much better than they did in the early days. In Chiku, the Salt Farmers Association purchases cartons of cooking oil and other goods for its members. Goods are piled in the new house of Chen Kuo-chen, a board member of the association. Through a loudspeaker, neighboring salt farmers are urged to come for the oil, rice, and other supplies bought with the salt farmers' welfare fund. People arrive on bicycles or with wheelbarrows to pick up their goods. Chen has also been successful in obtaining labor insurance for retired salt farmers, something which was unimaginable in the old days.
Though conditions have improved, the occupation is disappearing. Shortly after retrocession, there were about 6,000 salt farmers with around 20,000 family members. In the 1960s, the number had shrunk to 5,000, and by 1982 only 2,700 remained. As of 1986, only 700 workers and 1,000 family members were still working the salt pans. While salt farming has always been a man's occupation, there are now more women workers.
Mechanization is also taking its toll. The current market price for table salt is about US$460 per ton, and it is all produced at the Tunghsiao Salt Refinery. Salt for industrial use is sold at US$40 per ton while salt used in fisheries and agriculture runs US$17 per ton, and both are produced in the salt fields in southern Taiwan. To offset high costs-more than US$30 per ton is paid in labor costs-the Tainan Saltworks have begun to automate. Mechanized salt pans were developed in 1980, but as a result many salt farmers were displaced and had to seek employment elsewhere. The Tainan Salt works has attempted to assist them, but only 1 percent were willing to look for other kinds of work because they lacked education and were no longer young.
Even if the Tainan Saltworks wanted to recruit new farmers, young workers would not come. Although the present generation of salt farmers succeeded to their parents' occupation, their children are absolutely unwilling to follow in their footsteps. They refuse to help their elders and even urge them to give up their jobs. The salt farmers are no longer exclusively reliant on salt farming as a principal source of income. Many of them have side jobs which generate more income. Mechanization has not only made salt farmers obsolete, but they themselves do not care much about the work anymore.
Workers at the Tainan Saltworks are concerned about the future of the salt industry. Says Chiang Kuo-shou, "Taiwan now produces 100,000 metric tons of salt annually. Most of the salt used in industry, which accounts for 80 percent of Taiwan's overall salt consumption, is imported. Only table salt is produced locally. The market price of US$.50 per kilogram for locally produced salt has not been raised in ten years, but it is still more expensive than imported salt. Naturally the salt business is bound to see losses."
The saltworks is thinking of diversifying, but is afraid of being criticized for competing with the private sector. For instance, they tried to grow vegetables in deserted salt pans. But vegetable farmers complained to authorities. They also tried to cultivate fish and shrimp in old pans but were forced to give up because of a low success rate and protests from local fish farmers. The saltworks is planning now to build recreational facilities on an idle field. In short, they must find other sources of income because the salt industry is no longer profitable.
Because it is much cheaper to import salt, industrial enterprises such as the Formosa Plastics Group and the China Petrochemical Corporation have been buying salt from abroad. However, in the event of an international crisis, imports might not be guaranteed. Therefore the Tunghsiao Salt Refinery, a government operated plant, will continue operations even if all salt fields are left idle.
The refinery manufactures salt using more modern methods. The ion exchange membrane method produces higher quality salt without the need for big fields, or much manual labor. Using this method, sea water is piped through filters, concentrated by electrodialysis and crystallized through evaporation. The removal of impurities completes the process, which takes nine and a half hours. Solar evaporation takes around 10 to 12 days.
Director Chiu of the refinery explains that this membrane exchange method is good for places of high population density and high labor costs. Japan was the first country to use it. In fact, only Japan, Korea, and Taiwan use the method at present. Rising oil prices prevent it from being more economical than solar evaporation. Australia, for example, produces large quantities of salt at low cost because of its dry and sunny climate. Australia's salt pans can produce layers of crystalized salt as thick as ten centimeters, compared with Taiwan's three centimeters.
Good production and good management have made the refinery one of the more profitable producers. Of the 100,000-ton annual output, 60,000 tons go to the food market. More than 30,000 tons go to industry, and slightly more than 7,000 tons are exported to Hong Kong. Chiu is concerned about the local price. In Taiwan, the government sets the price of salt. In other parts of the world, the salt industry is part of the private sector, and the market sets the price. He feels there will always be a demand for salt, and the price should be determined by the market. Chiu has tried his best to cut costs. For example, new pipes imported from Japan would have cost US$4 million, but only US$2 million was spent by seeking local suppliers.
Chiu is also worried by a shrinking labor pool. Paisatun, in Miaoli county, was selected as the site to build the refinery because there are no major rivers in the area. This means less pollution and water with a higher salinity. While the town is also located near transportation routes, it is too remote to recruit skilled workers. Currently, 20 percent of its positions are vacant. As more people retire or leave, the labor shortage will only worsen.
Local salt production technology has not been upgraded for years, even the facilities used at the refinery are thirty or forty years old. Ten years may see the disappearance of the bleak and barren salt fields, whipped by strong winds and the scorching sun. The salt farmers who work under the light of the moon and get off when the sun comes up will become a thing of the past. They will no longer between placing their baskets of salt in the pans as egrets circle in the sky above. Salt pans and salt farmers may well become history, but salt production will continue. Because, as an old salt farmer said, "People need salt. The simplest things are the most indispensable." ■