In Okinawa's main shopping precincts of International Avenue and Peace Avenue you frequently see sundry goods stores decked out with the ROC flag and "duty free" signs, all of which are 100 percent Chinese owned. The Japanese government introduced a duty free system in Okinawa to develop the local tourism industry by luring tourists with cheap imported goods. So apart from the restaurant business, many of the 5,000 and more overseas Chinese who have emigrated to Okinawa from Taiwan since 1945 run small sundry goods stores.
With his botanical gardens, Li Chien represents a successful new departure. In 1959 he became only the second person of Chinese descent after baseball star Wang Chen-chih to be invited to a Japanese imperial garden party, and he's the only Chinese to be elected one of Okinawa's 100 top businessmen. Apart from being proprietor of the Southeastern Botanical Garden and Cactus Park he is also a deputy director of the Okinawa Tourism Association and Okinawa Institute of Tropical Entomology, serves on the boards of the Okinawa Museum and Japan Botanical Garden Association, and is honorary chairman of the Okinawa Overseas Chinese Society.
The Japanese prefecture of Okinawa, once known as the Ryukyu Islands, lies in the subtropical zone and enjoys a mean temperature of 22 degrees Celsius throughout the year with only mild seasonal variations, averaging 16 degrees during the winter months. Its small size and remoteness have discouraged industrial development, so the Japanese government actively promotes tourism there.
Li Chien's Southeastern Botanical Garden on the outskirts of Naha covers 400,000 square meters and boasts 3,300 species of flowers, plants and trees and over 200 kinds of tropical fruit. Recognized by the Okinawa Education Commission as equivalent to a museum, the garden can benefit from international exchanges which allow it to own many rare plants that are protected species in other countries and whose commercial export is restricted.
Entering the botanical garden through the main gate, you are welcomed by an avenue of Big King and Winebottle coconut palms; Okinawa's flower the bright red hibiscus, the orange "bird of paradise" and pastel yellow water lilies display their blooms; seen from a vantage point, small canoes with South Sea Islander-style thatched canopies bob gently alongside water birds and carp; a hump-backed bridge made of cartwheels makes the perfect spot for a photograph. Thanks to the clear blue sky and fresh air, people and plants alike look quite transformed.
The Cactus Park at Itoman boasts over 450 species of cactus, 100,000 plants in all, of every height and ranging from globular to fan-shaped. Li Chien's pride and joy is a 10 meter tall bankaicyu, which is a type of cactus that only grows one centimeter a year so it must be getting on for 1,000 years old. The park's souvenir shop is a veritable "cactus world," selling cactus shaped cups, dolls and clothes, as well as unique cactus tea and cactus ice-cream.
Okinawa's subtropical climate suits the Southeastern Botanical Garden's tropical plants down to the ground, but for the cacti which grow in desert regions, plentiful rainfall and regular buffeting by typhoon winds can prove fatal. This is why there are no large-scale cactus parks in Southeast Asia, including Taiwan, only small-scale hothouse cactus areas. But Li Chien believes that the cactus, a life-saver in the desert, is a plant with a tenacious hold on life. "Transfer them into a greenhouse and they may grow big and tall, but they haven't got any toughness," is how he justifies his insistence on setting up an open-air cactus park.
As a typhoon approached Okinawa last December, gangs of workers on mobile ladders busily set up supports for phoenix dacpylifera coconut palms and sheathed the cacti in protective covers, knowing carelessness might spell curtains for a 1,000-year-old cactus! And Li Chien has been there--the first year his cactus park opened he was too busy with a World Ocean Expo to guard against a typhoon, and his giant cacti and over one hundred 15-meter tall phoenix dacpylifera coconut palms were all blown flat.
Li Chien has his own method for coping with heavy rains: his cactus park is equipped with its own drainage system and fans to control the soil humidity, while the excess rainwater is used for irrigation and hosing down the roads. This is why the Cactus Park incurred construction expenses of ￥2 billion yen at its opening in 1965.
Walking round the garden, Li Chien points here and there and names every plant, along with its characteristics and habit; his brain is a map with what plant comes from where clearly mark ed. Before he was joined as a partner by his daughter, he would tour the garden at 3 o'clock every morning. "If a tree is unwell it 'calls' to me by itself, I can tell what's wrong by the way it looks." Li Chien feels it's much easier to communicate with plants than with people. At one point he suddenly stops the car, walks over to a globular cactus and picks off a beetle that is gnawing a shoot, explaining in detail what harm this particular beetle does to cacti and quickly finding a worker to discuss what steps to take. He chuckles: "Other people come here for pleasure, but for me it's a painin the neck!"
Li Chien no longer patrols his garden daily, instead he's actually moved in above the botanical garden office to be with his plants at all times.
At 62, Li Chien can now claim to be a walking encyclopedia of plants, but before taking up this business he wasn't just an ignoramus about plant names, he didn't even like plants.
Born in 1929 into an Ilan farming family, Li Chien grew up in Hualien. As a schoolchild he and his brothers had to help weed the fields and dig up sweet potatoes before and after school. To him plants were food and meant hard work, he never thought he'd carve himself a career out of them. Then a letter he had from a friend in Japan at the age of 27, asking him to help buy some coconut seeds, initiated his lifelong associationwith plants.
In those days Taiwan's horticultural industry was in its infancy, and as a complete novice Li Chien tried several dealers without success. On a hunch he popped along to the Taipei Botanical Garden, picked up a few coconut seeds as indicated by markers, and posted them off. From then on his friend ordered 100,000 seeds a year, enabling Li Chien to set up his first business--Taipei Tropical Plant Trading Company.
But he mused to himself: "It's so chilly in Japan, what do they want with all these coconut seeds?" So off he went to Japan and saw how they grew coconut palm seedlings in hothouses to sell as indoor plants, makinga pretty penny in the process.
Back in Taiwan he calculated: "It's expensive growing the seedlings in hothouses in Japan, why not sell coconut seedlings direct to Japan fromTaiwan?"
So Li Chien carefully washed 48 coconut palm seedlings of different kinds and took a plane to Japan, where he rented a hothouse to display them and test the market. One day a middle-aged man came up and said he wanted to buy the lot, and asked Li Chien to name his price. Taken by surprise, Li Chien asked the other man to suggest a price--it turned out to be ￥4.5 million. Forty years ago that was an astronomical figure, and Li Chien was so taken aback the buyer assumed he was stalling, so he upped his offer by another ￥1.5 million to a cool ￥6 million! This huge sum convinced Li Chien how valuable coconut palms were in Japan, so he decided to export them on a big scale.
As the saying goes: "Things are hardest at the start." Having plumped for exporting, he came up against problems of packaging and shipping. In those days, counting quarantine procedures, shipment to Japan took three weeks; and all soil had to be removed to guard against infectious disease. What could retain moisture and keep the seedlings from withering up? Cloth was no good, it easily rotted the roots if the weather turned hot; heat-treated bacteria-free soil was available, but too expensive. Li Chien studied for two years in National Taiwan University's department of horticulture, but apart from furthering his knowledge of plant breeding it didn't help him find a substitute.
"One morning I was just going out when I saw my wife squatting down scraping pots with a pumice stone. It hit me like a flash: wasn't crushed pumice stone just the thing I needed?" Li Chien had found his substitute for soil, and shipments of potted coconut palms soon began to be sent by freighter to Japan.
In 1965 Li Chien passed through Okinawa on a business trip to Japan and was immediately attracted by its natural scenery. It occurred to him: the climate is similar to Taiwan's, suited to growing tropical plants; and transferring the nursery business here would mean cutting out the international quarantine procedure! So he decided to buy land in Okinawaas a base for his nursery.
Introduced to the island of Iriomote, an hour's flying time away from Naha, Li Chien set his sights on a 900,000-ping plot of virgin land. The asking price was US$0.10 a ping. "I thought to myself, ten cents a ping doesn't sound like much, but US$90,000 is a lot." After negotiating with the owner all morning in a corrugated iron office he couldn't make up his mind and went off for a breather, buying a packet of cigarettes on the way. The cigarettes cost 35 cents a pack, and Li Chien suddenly saw the light: "Three and a half pings of land for a pack of cigarettes-- why am I hesitating?"
From picking up coconut seeds to setting up in business in Japan, Li Chien's rise seemed like a fairy story, but his first venture in Okinawa -- opening up land on Iriomote Island--almost cost him his last penny.
Arriving on the island with US$200,000 and 50 workers from Taiwan, the place had no water, no electricity, no roads, and they hardly met a living soul during the day. Li Chien and his men often summed up Iriomote Island in the phrase "more wild pigs than people." He built a tree house, bathed in a lake, and began the hardest phase of his life.
Opening up virgin land proved far harder than he had imagined, transportation was infrequent and costly, and two years later most of his US$200,000 was gone. Li Chien just had to abandon his primitive paradise.
Today Iriomote is a Japanese national park and no development is allowed. But thinking back to those days Li Chien insists: "If I had the choice again, I'd never try to develop Iriomote. Man cannot beat Nature, andthe battle isn't worth it."
Fortunately, heaven helps those who help themselves, especially if you're intelligent and stubborn. Li Chien was reaching the end of the road when he discovered konjacs growing plentifully in the mountains of Okinawa, so he assembled a gang of temporary workers to pick 30,000 konjacs and sold them in Japan at US$3 apiece. The resulting US$90,000 gave him the wherewithal to set up his two botanical gardens.
Li Chien's friends often describe him as a tough nut, "like his name" (Chien means "tough"). On Iriomote he worked over 16 hours a day, felling trees till his palms bled. But in the eyes of his daughter Li Yueh-chen, her father is not just a tough cookie, he's a highly responsible man.
"He never let Mother and me know about his failure on Iriomote, he kept us in comfort in Naha and even fitted air conditioning in every room for the hot Okinawan summers." Li Yueh-chen reveals. Li Chien believes a man should shoulder complete responsibility for his family, and would often tell his daughter: "My dear girl! If any man says he really loves you, and asks you to struggle alongside him, don't marry him. Struggle isman's lot in life."
These ideas often caused him to worry over whether to let his daughter take over the family business--of course privately he wanted his own child to take over, but he was afraid his daughter would neglect her family as a result. Today Li Yueh-chen is an indispensable helpmeet, but he still makes it plain to her: "If you ever think of giving up the family business, don't sell the botanical gardens, donate them to the government."
As Li Yueh-chen explains, her father is worried that selling the gardens might mean they would be converted to some other use if land prices were to rise; only donating them to the government will ensure the plants' continued survival.
For Li Chien and his family, the gardens record their process of immigration and putting down roots. Today the Southeastern Botanical Garden is an integral part of the Okinawan scene, providing employment and an indispensable place for local schoolchildren's outings.
Should he stay on? For first-generation settler Li Chien, his heart will always be in Hualien. Second-generation Li Yueh-chen was given the best education in Tokyo, and she has spent a portion of her youth in Taiwan, but most of her friends are in Japan and she lives in Okinawa. "I often envy my husband, he has childhood friends in Okinawa and favorite little restaurants here." So she has let her third-generation children study in Okinawa and blend in with the place, "when we're gone, they'll have roots of their own."
In 1986 Li Chien donated a 4,000-ping park to Hualien city, named the ROC-Okinawa Memorial Park, as a tribute to his home town.
Li Chien still has family and friends in Hualien and used to fly back 20 or 30 times a year, but has cut back on these trips because "my old home is getting less and less like what I remember. When I first came to Okinawa I used to feel Okinawans weren't as diligent as the Taiwanese, but today it's the Okinawans who seem more in touch with reality." Moreover, the trees and streams of Hualien aren't as green as before, his old friends are passing away, and Li Chien feels each trip home is harder to bear. He hopes this little park will remind the people of Hualien to cherish their own beautiful land and make every tree and every plant in Hualien bloom as fresh and green as those in his garden in Okinawa.
[Picture Caption]
Li Chien's Cactus Park is one of the can't miss tourist attractions in Okinawa.
In 1959, Li became the second Chinese to be granted an audience with theEmperor of Japan, after Wang Chen-chih. (photo courtesy of Li Chien)
With a typhoon coming, the staff get busy tying down trees and plants.
The Southeast Botanical Gardens covers 400,000 square meters, and has more than 2,500 types of tropical plant life. (photo courtesy of Li Chien)
In Li Chien's plant kingdom, even the garbage can looks natural.
Going through an old photo album and spinning tales of the past, Li Chien breaks into a smile.
It's not easy to cultivate cactus in the wet tropics of Asia.
The Cactus Park is Asia's only open-air cactus garden. (photo courtesy of Li Chien)
Li Chien lives right in the botanical gardens, making it easy to keep aneye on and learn about the plant life.
With the setting sun, the Cactus Garden becomes a tropical desert wonderland. (photo courtesy of Li Chien)
In 1959, Li became the second Chinese to be granted an audience with theEmperor of Japan, after Wang Chen-chih. （photo courtesy of Li Chien）
With a typhoon coming, the staff get busy tying down trees and plants.
The Southeast Botanical Gardens covers 400,000 square meters, and has more than 2,500 types of tropical plant life. （photo courtesy of Li Chien）
In Li Chien's plant kingdom, even the garbage can looks natural.
Going through an old photo album and spinning tales of the past, Li Chien breaks into a smile.
It's not easy to cultivate cactus in the wet tropics of Asia.
The Cactus Park is Asia's only open-air cactus garden. （photo courtesy of Li Chien）
Li Chien lives right in the botanical gardens, making it easy to keep aneye on and learn about the plant life.
With the setting sun, the Cactus Garden becomes a tropical desert wonderland. （photo courtesy of Li Chien）
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