Boycott Taiwanese strawberry farms!

I went up into the mounatins this Sunday after moving, because my friend wanted to check out some strawberry farms. He thought he saw an ad online that said if you go to this farm, you pay 50NT (US1.30) and you can walk out with as much fruit as you can carry. He was mistaken.

The mountains were beautiful. The air is wild and there are enormous tropical butterflies and gigantic scary spiders bigger than your hand. We walked into this farm, and caught a glimpse of the strawberry patch. It's in a big greenhouse. And that's only the beginning of how silly it is: first you get a box about as big as your hands, about 1.5 pounds of strawberries will fit in, and to fill this box will cost 10 US dollars. Then you enter the greenhouse which is filled with small rows covered in gray plastic, with holes where the strawberry plants pop through. You take the tiny scissors given to you and snip the strawberries off at the stem, placing them carefully in a box. You may not "try" them. No eating of strawberries allowed in the strawberry greenhouse.

We didn't do this. It was too ridiculous.

We instead went into the clementine orchards, where you can eat as many clementines as you want, and if you don't want to pay...OK! But the clementines are cheap. There's a stream running through the orchard full of young salmon making their slow way to the ocean, and the water is so clear it's like looking into a fish bowl. The mountain was covered in a misty rain, and from the orchard you could see mountains upon mountains, shadowy in the distance. So it was good to come, anyways, but I don't recommend the strawberries.