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  PlanetArk 24 Aug 06
Illegal Trade in "Get Rich" Algae Expands Deserts
Story by Emma Graham-Harrison

TONGXIN, China -- Say "get rich" when you step off a bus in the shabby northwestern Chinese town of Tongxin, and a swarm of taxi drivers rush to offer their services.

None hopes to make a fortune, but for a few notes the drivers are happy to guide visitors through a warren of muddy backstreets to gated compounds where an illegal trade thrives.

But instead of dealing in guns or drugs, the criminals in this corner of Ningxia province have caches of a tasteless vegetable, prized only for the sound of its name.

Facai (pronounced fa-tsai) is a blue-green algae that grows in the sandy semi-desert of western China, anchoring the fine soil in place and retaining moisture to support other plants in an area struggling to stop the desert expanding.

Its name sounds almost identical to characters meaning "get rich", making it popular -- and extremely expensive -- in southern China, Hong Kong and cities with large ethnic Chinese populations such as Singapore and New York.

Hunger for edible good luck is devastating China's western provinces, because it is harvested by raking up all the sparse vegetation the facai grows among, leaving the sandy soil exposed to the wind.

Dried and clumped together, its spindly black strands look like a scouring pad or a head of very messy hair. Cooked, it acquires the spongy texture of tree fungus, with a bland flavour usually impossible to detect under heavy seasoning.

Groups of impoverished facai pickers, nicknamed "the central fungus commission" in a bitter word play on the all-powerful Central Military Commission in Beijing, then take the bundles home to pick out the black strands and sell them on to traders.

"The facai serves as a net that covers the sandy areas and forms the base for other species to grow on," said Lister Cheung, chief executive of the Hong Kong Conservancy Association which has been campaigning against eating facai for several years.

"When it is collected they rake over sandy areas, and to collect just one catty (600 grams) they plough up the equivalent of four to five football fields," she added. For that amount, a trader in Ningxia can earn almost as much as the 300 yuan (US$38) average monthly cash income for a Chinese farmer.

Extra acres of exposed land contribute sand to the whirling storms that each spring travel as far as the capital Beijing, over 800 km (500 miles) away, turning the air there as orange-yellow as the Martian atmosphere in low-budget science-fiction films.

NO OPTIONS

This environmental devastation -- and its visible impact on the seat of China's government -- led to a ban on collection, sale and export of the algae six years ago.

But the trade continues, centred on the predominantly Muslim south of Ningxia because in one of the most poverty-stricken regions of China residents have few other options.

It is a land of dry river beds and scrappy exhausted hills. One village, summing up a desperate thirst that has only worsened with the mismanagement of recent years, is called Hanjiaoshui, meaning "shout for water".

Drug trading and use is rife, recurrent droughts make crops fail regularly and even herding sheep and goats is strictly controlled because their grazing speeds up desertification.

"It hasn't rained for four years. How can I support my family here?" said 22-year-old Ma Weijun, an unemployed father squatting despondently beside his house outside the hamlet of Xiamaguan.

Food handed out by the government to compensate for land placed off limits by anti-desertification programmes is of such low quality only animals can eat it, other villagers say.

But the facai, which no one there will admit to picking, sells for 400 yuan a kilogram in nearby Tongxin. It goes for five times that much in Hong Kong where it is so prized that a double black market -- for fake versions of the illegal plant made from dyed seaweed or corn husks -- flourishes.

SELLERS FRET, DINERS ENJOY

The whole town knows where to buy the facai, but the ban has pushed the trade underground and created a climate of fear.

A wholesale market, officially closed in 2000, is now hidden down a maze of winding streets in the town's impoverished heart. Sacks of facai in every stage of preparation from bundles of grass to silky black bundles line the road.

But there are no Han Chinese or foreigners, and the Muslim traders block photographs, grill outsiders and refuse to answer any questions. Even in the homes of wealthier middlemen, many of whom are trying to shift into the wool trade, there is tension in the air.

"I don't do this any more, this is just the last of my stock," said one seller, glancing nervously at his courtyard gate as he pulled bundles of the dried plant from a back room.

Only wealthy diners seem unconcerned and, ironically, the ban and environmentalists' campaigns have pushed up prices, making it an even more prestigious treat for guests.

"We can't eat it at home," an official from one of the city's top state-owned firms explained at a dinner for foreign visitors before popping a clump into her mouth. "It's expensive and it's banned. But good for your health." (US$1 = 7.976 yuan)
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