Coffee under the Japanese colonial administration
Why the first crop was planted at all, and why it did not last.
A colonial supply chain
Coffee was introduced as an export crop for the empire, trialled on several sites, and pushed hardest where the climate suited it: Gukeng, Huwei, and parts of the east.
The point was never a local coffee culture; it was a commodity to ship.
Taiwanese coffee began as an export and spent a century trying to become a drink.
What survived
When the administration ended, so did the buying. Most trees were abandoned or replaced, and the knowledge survived only in a few families.
What remains is place names, a handful of old plants, and the habit of treating coffee as something you grow for someone else.
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