Simplified Chinese

Across China: Taiwan entrepreneur bears fruit via waxberry cakes

Source: XinhuaUpdated: 2021-08-27
NINGBO, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan entrepreneur Paul Tseng spent a busy summer in east China's Zhejiang Province, as the local waxberries ripened in June, and he needed to process them into delicious snacks.

Engaging in waxberry snack production was entirely unexpected for the young man.

Tseng established a youth entrepreneurship base with his partners in the city of Xiamen, east China's Fujian Province in 2014 and moved to neighboring Zhejiang Province four years later.

The story about waxberry started when Tseng's friends sent him more than 40 baskets of local waxberries in the summer of 2019.

"I was so happy to receive so many fresh waxberries, but I couldn't eat all of them. So I made the waxberries into jam," said Tseng, who later came up with an idea -- using the waxberry jam to make snacks.

"Taiwan's pineapple cake is a very popular snack among tourists from the Chinese mainland. Why can't I learn from the methods of making pineapple cake to create waxberry cakes?" Tseng said.

Different from the simple sweet taste of pineapple cake, an additional sour taste from the waxberry enriches the texture of the cake. Tseng sent some to his friends and received praise.

Tseng then decided to start a career. The man of action spent just three months to purchase waxberries, hire bakers, raise funds and open the first store in Cixi City.

"A total of 20 tonnes of waxberries produced more than 200,000 pieces of cake last year, making a profit of more than 2 million yuan (308,450 U.S. dollars)," said Tseng, who made hay to open two more stores in Zhejiang.

Apart from waxberry cake, this year, Tseng began to develop a series of derivative products, such as waxberry ice cream, egg rolls, rice cakes and sausage.

"We are going to push out new products including dumplings and tangyuan (glutinous rice balls) stuffed with waxberries in winter, and expand our selling online," he added.

Realizing the huge potential of the Chinese mainland market, Tseng believes that his goal to make his waxberry products into popular snacks could soon come true. Enditem