Watermelon Nomads: The Life of Taiwan's Itinerant Melon Experts

REPORTER:

Taiwan is blessed with a year-round supply of fresh watermelon. The fruit is always growing somewhere, just never in the same place for long. And so, quality inspectors and their field workers roam the country in a seasonal pattern—a nomadic way of life that few people outside of farming circles ever hear about. John Van Trieste takes a look at how they work and live.

Wang Chin-yi’s life revolves around watermelons. For years, he’s spent most of his days wandering Taiwan’s watermelon fields, using his deep experience with color, pattern and even sound to judge which melons are ripe. Each one that’s ready gets a stamp—and a click on his hand-held counter.

It’s hard, repetitive work: he judges this field he’s in today can produce well over 10,000 watermelons, each one in need of checking. And while it might not look it, this is also highly specialized work.

Wang is one of just around ten watermelon assessors in Taiwan, people who not only have to judge the quality of the fruit but also make delicate calculations about how many trucks he needs to take them away.

Wang Chin-yi (WATERMELON ASSESSOR): 

You have to see how many trucks. If one watermelon is [18 kg] on average, our trucks can carry over [10,800 kg].You stamp a little over 600 watermelons, and that way there won’t be overloading or too few watermelons, which would make transport pricey.

It’s slow, sweaty work—but at around [US$230] a day it pays handsomely by local standards. And thanks to Taiwan’s climate, there’s watermelons to harvest year-round, notwithstanding occasional damage from typhoons, drought or other bad weather.

But as Wang Chin-yi’s cousin and watermelon wholesaler Wang Chia-cheng explains, their livelihood is grueling in another way: it’s a life lived on the road—a practically nomadic existence. The reason: watermelons take a toll on the soil, so farmers in different areas rotate through the year to keep the supply constant. Once the harvest in one place is done, it’s time to pack up and move on.

Wang Chia-cheng (WATERMELON WHOLESALER): 

I move all the way around Taiwan about twice each year. I live in one place for about a month,about the length of watermelon production [in one area].

Though they’re around retirement age, the Wangs keep going. Over the years, they’ve formed close bonds with farmers all over the country.

They also have whole teams of workers who migrate with them through the year, whose livelihood depends on this seasonal cycle.

Hsu Yi-chun (TEAM LEADER): 

One person picks, another takes it from them and another drives the truck. We have professional assessors who help us check the watermelons’ qualityand put a stamp on them. We pick those that have been stamped.

This is a thriving business: if watermelons from the Wang’s family land is included, they can sell a million watermelons per year. And this is also a family enterprise, passed down to the current generation: for these itinerant experts, watermelons are in their blood.