T AIWAN
Amid eastern Taiwan’s beautiful landscape, a centuries-old addiction still plagues the populace
WOR D S M I CH AEL AL L EN
25
iſt y-two-year-old Mr Liu likes to bet in underground gambling dens. Chewing betel nut helps him keep focused. He can easily get through 200 nuts per day – four whole packs. T e nuts, which come from the areca palm, give users a buzz familiar to coffee drinkers and cigarette smokers. One of the major downsides: chewing betel nut stains your mouth, lips, teeth
– and even your stools – an unattractive shade of red. It can also lead to at least five types of cancer. A habitual user like Mr Liu – who sells peanut wraps
to tourists visiting the Wufongci scenic area in Jiaoxi, a hot-spring town in the northeast of the country – doesn’t seem to be concerned, though. Indeed, he is proud to show off and even let me photograph his vermillion tongue, flecks of the nut still stuck to it. If you’re travelling to Taiwan for business
and only visiting Taipei, you probably won’t see many people chewing betel nut (also known as areca nut). Middle-class Taiwanese regard it as a rather coarse habit. “That’s for uneducated people. That’s why you don’t see many shops selling betel nuts in Taipei city. It’s mostly for labourers,” says Wang Ting-chun, who works for a public relations firm in Taipei. But on Taiwan’s mostly rural east coast, it seems to be everywhere.
bus ine s s tr a v el ler .c om AP RIL 20 19
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