By Joy Chiang and Sally Jensen
Unperturbed by the crashing waves, 72-year-old Wu Feng-chiao inhales handfuls of purple-brown seaweed to process into jelly, one of the last women in Taiwan to keep the tradition of seaweed harvesting alive.
Searching for seaweed on the rocky coastline at the edge of the Pacific Ocean can be arduous and dangerous, says Wu, whose passion has kept him going for more than half a century.
But as younger Taiwanese largely opt for city life in the island’s far northeast, she fears this tradition could disappear when her generation of “hainu,” or “sea women,” are no longer able to carry on.
“If it’s in your blood, you’d naturally want to learn, wouldn’t you?” she told AFP in her village of Magang.
“Even if you just come here, collect something from the sea and eat, that’s already part of being hainu.”
Along the easternmost point of the coast, sea women stuff “stone flowers” — as the seaweed is called in Taiwanese and Mandarin — into net bags.
They then haul heavy loads home, spreading the seaweed on the ground and removing the waste.
Absorbing sunlight, the seaweed takes about four days to dry completely before it can be washed several times and boiled to release the jelly-like substance known as agar-agar.
Once dried, 300 grams (0.7 pounds) of Gelidium algae can produce about 50 bottles of refreshing agar-agar coolers, each of which sells for about $1.30.
Moving around the shore in goggles and a wetsuit, an energetic Wu shares her decades of experience practicing the tradition she learned from her father as a teenager.
“Seaweed grows around big rocks – when there are big waves, you have to move aside quickly,” she said. “If a wave hits you, you can get hurt.”
The small woman can safely pull a single sack weighing 40–50 jin (about 20–25 kilograms, or 44–55 pounds) over uneven and slippery rocks.
“It’s hard work… the hardest part is turning the seaweed. It’s very heavy and your shoulders hurt afterwards.”
“I just can’t resist”
Hainu, a holdover from the Japanese colonial era, share some similarities with the centuries-old matriarchal tradition of haenyeo free diving in South Korea, although Taiwan’s sea women do not go underwater.
Now there are no more than four women in Magang village who still regularly collect “stone flowers,” says Wu, all in their 70s or older.
“How many more years can we keep doing this? We’re really hoping some young people will come back and keep it going,” she said.
“We just don’t want this tradition to go away.”
Beyond the threat from demographic changes, the seaweed itself is also “particularly scarce this year,” Wu said, though she wasn’t sure why.
And developers have encroached on the quiet coastal village, but “we’re still resisting them,” she said.
“If all of us are forced to leave, then only a handful of people will remain.”
In 2018, residents established the Sandiaojiao Cultural Development Association to preserve the stone houses of Magang and keep the Hainu tradition alive.
Despite the odds, Wu is by no means ready to give up.
“Sometimes I just can’t resist. Like yesterday, I wasn’t planning on going, but when I saw how calm the water was, I couldn’t.”
