by Xinhua writers Fu Shuangqi and Ren Qinqin
BEIJING, July 2 (Xinhua) -- A juicy golden mango on the shelf of a high-end Beijing grocery looked as fresh as it did in the orchard in southern Taiwan, showing no signs of a journey by ship and air.
Three days ago, a farmer picked it from the mango tree at Yujing township in southern Taiwan on the early morning when its skin was still a bit green.
Packed in a cardboard box, it was sent to Kaohsiung port in the morning, where its journey across the Taiwan Straits would start.
It arrived in Kinmen Island, 150 nautical miles away from Kaohsiung, in the evening. Because the customs there closed at 3 p.m., it had to spend a night in Kinmen and headed for Xiamen, a mainland port in southeastern Fujian Province, on the second morning.
The voyage from Kinmen to Xiamen only took an hour. It rushed to the airport on a freezer truck waiting at the harbor after strict quarantine inspections for insects and pesticides at Xiamen customs.
At around 10 p.m. on the second day, the mango touched down at the Beijing airport and, on the third morning, customers saw it in a perfect state at a grocery especially for Taiwan fruit.
"Before the shipping service resumed directly between Kinmen and Xiamen in 2007, we had to ship fruits from Taiwan to the mainland via Hong Kong. It would take six to seven days," said John Wong, the grocery owner. Wong also runs a fruit trade company named Hometown of Farmers.
It usually takes 10 days for a fresh mango to begin rotting. Fruit trade always competes with time.
"Cutting the transport time from seven days to three days means mangoes can stay on the shelf for longer time. There comes the money," Wong said.
The direct shipping between Xiamen and Kaohsiung, which started in December last year, saves another day.
"Shipping costs will reduce by another 10 percent with direct shipping," Wong said. "But now ships sail every three days. Mangoes cannot wait. It will be perfect if there is daily sail."
A 0.5 kg Taiwan mango sells for 25 yuan (3.62 U.S. dollars), three times the price of its mainland counterparts. However, the business is good.
Wong runs 18 green groceries in the mainland with the annual revenue of about 30 million yuan, selling about 13 varieties of popular fruits such as mango, star fruit, custard apple, pineapple and wax apple.
"During festival seasons such as the Spring Festival, my shop in Beijing sells three- to- five containers of fruit every day. During the ten-day Spring Festival season last year, I sold around300 tonnes," he said.
He and his colleagues got up at 3 a.m. to arrange business and the shop was crowded with customers.
But things were not always so good. Wong was one of the first Taiwan businessmen entering the cross-Strait fruit trade in 2005 when the mainland allowed the import of 12 varieties of Taiwan fruits and imposed no duty.
"At the beginning, it was tough. Shipping and operation cost were high. The shelf life was short. The market had not been established," he said.
Wong once had to dump 1,200 boxes of rotten fruit.
"I cried. All of them were grown with our hard work," he recalled.
Many gave up, but he stayed because of his confidence of cross-Strait relations and market potential here.
Policy and market changes reinforced his perspective. The mainland increased the import quota from 12 varieties to 18 and simplified quarantine procedures.
"More and more mainland customers know that Taiwan fruits are high quality and safer despite higher prices. So we perform well in the high-end market," he said.
According to the Ministry of Commerce, about 3,093 tonnes of Taiwan fruit, worth of 3.3 million dollars, entered the mainland in the last five months of 2005 after the policy took effect in August. In the following years, the figures grew steadily. The import reached 4.82 million dollars in 2008.
What mainland customers have on their dining tables is becoming more linked to the pockets of Taiwan farmers. In May, the mainland announced it would purchase more commodities from Taiwan as a joint effort to fight the global downturn.
A delegation of 83 mainland retailers and logistic firms will go to Taiwan to buy fruit and other farm produce this month. The island's agriculture department also started promotion in several mainland cities such as the northeastern city of Shenyang and southwestern Chongqing.
While his bank accounts reported more RMB numbers, Wong did not plan to change them all to New Taiwan dollars. He wanted to grow mango on the mainland.
He has found a perfect location in Pingtan county of Fujian. About 1,000 hectares of farm land will be rented and divided into dozens of orchards, every of which will grow only one variety of fruit.
Taiwan farmers will be in charge of farming and Wong will provide seedlings, fertilizer and pesticide.
It will need 300 million yuan (43.48 million dollars) of investment to start the ambitious plan, including the land rent and cost to build greenhouses and an organic fertilizer plant.
"I am still a farmer. I just hope all of you can eat good fruit and I can earn some money," he said.