By June Tsai
The 63-year-old former fisherman deftly chopped patchouli leaves with a kitchen knife outside a simple single-story building. The fresh scent of the leaves assailed the nostrils of any visitor approaching what turned out to be a small factory, located in a green corner of Taiwan's northeastern Jinshan Township. Cai Rong-da was preparing the fragrant leaves for processing, after which they would be mixed with other ingredients to make soap.
Cai's daughter Siou-man, who got him involved, was busy inside the orderly workplace, filling an order of Yuan Soap for the Eslite bookstore chain. The soaps are made by hand using a wide range of ingredients, including mugwort, lemon, mung bean, tangerine, cypress, purple gromwell and eucalyptus. All of the ingredients are organically grown and combined with quality vegetable oils and fresh spring water from Yangmingshan National Park, according to Chiang Jung-yuan, founder of the Yuan Studio Co. Ltd. "Some people suspect that artificial fragrances are added to our soaps. They don't know many herbs have such a strong scent," Chiang said Jan. 21, explaining that every product was made according to his own recipe.
After procuring the plants and herbs from a number of organic farms, the soap master said, the ingredients are then separately dried, boiled or simmered into liquids, thick pastes or cubes of raw soap to "ensure that the effects of different plants do not offset one another if mixed improperly." He added that the complete process of saponification takes about 30 days.
Originally, Yuan Soap's reputation spread by word of mouth, seemingly a reflection of society's fear of pollution and post-modern nostalgia of handmade items. But since its quiet emergence two years ago, more than 300 organic stores now stock the company's soaps. They can also be purchased in select high-end department stores and through the company website.
The soaps, colored naturally by the ingredients, use minimum packaging and labeling. Yet Chiang said he did not want to emphasize the organic, handmade nature of the products that bear his name. "For me, that is how it should be. Making something by hand is only a procedure to create the things we want," Chiang explained, while stirring a liquid in a glass pot.
Life was not always so natural or philosophical though. Before taking on his soap-making venture, Chiang was the advertising force behind many election campaigns that advanced people's political careers. Since 1994, he had been engaged in public-relations work, designing and implementing campaign strategies. "Candidates were my merchandise," he said, pointing out that some of the politicians he "packaged" even went on to win.
However, "It was a business in which right and wrong played no role," Chiang said, elaborating that a campaign's creativity played second fiddle to the ability to win votes for the candidate. "Sometimes quality is not under your control," he said, "Yet you are forced to believe in what you promote." After 10 years in the business, conflicts within himself led him to reconsider his career and his passion for life, and he ultimately gave up the highly lucrative public-relations world in his early forties.
Chiang had actually started making soap for his own use 10 years ago, while still engineering political campaigns. "I have sensitive skin. That's why I tried to make soap for myself," he said. People who tried out Chiang's soaps encouraged him to try and sell them to the public. In the end, his homemade soaps sold like hot cakes at a friend's organic store in Taipei. The company grew rapidly and now has 40 employees, including 10 at the factory in Jinshan. "It all began quite accidentally," he stated.
Chiang went on to confess that there was actually a certain sense of continuity between what he is doing now and his previous career. "My emotional attachment to the beautiful and the ideal has always helped me do the job at hand," he said, adding he was good at creating identities for candidates in terms of their ideas. "I am the same idealist, only there is no conflict in my mind now. I feel very happy making soap. We are doing a down-to-earth thing. I think that's where the power of our product comes from," he explained. "This city is used to being tagged with prices. More than half of all logos are actually meaningless. When a man begins to live a simple life, his values need not be defined by price anymore," he stated in one of the promotional lines he wrote for his company's products.
Chiang's enterprise is more than about branding the simplest daily necessity, however. For the entrepreneur, what lies behind his humble products is a distinctly social vision. Chiang said his goal was to help empower and develop the community where his factory is located. He insists on employing residents in the Jinshan area, with most of the 10 staff being related to one another. "I hope to give them more than just a salary. They are the hands that give the products something extra. That is worth more than money. So, the profits should be returned to them," Chiang said, believing that was the best way an idea could be materialized and a community sustained.
According to Chiang's secretary, Christopher Chen, Chiang refused to lay off workers for the sake of profits. "He leads a very simple life. He doesn't even lock his door after leaving his apartment," Chen added, implying profit margins were the last thing on Chiang's mind. For his part, Chiang said that he could never get rid of workers because the company is always keen to tweak a recipe whenever a modification is found. "Reflecting on price, it [might cost] me a few more dollars, yet that represents an insistence on values," he said, referring to the labor-intensive process of making Yuan soaps.
The next focus for the company is running its own farm. Yuan Studio has acquired a three-hectare plot--a terraced field that lay fallow for over 20 years. The rent-free land was offered by a friend who believed in what Chiang was trying to do, and the farm already supplies five kinds of herb for use in manufacturing Yuan Soap.
"What you get from nature should be returned to nature," said the self-professed Buddhist. Chiang said he hopes the farm can eventually grow all the herbs the company needs. "Eventually, I hope it could become a sanctuary for Taiwan's herbs."
In today's world of globalization, Chiang believed Yuan Soap could offer inspiration to the many generic products on the market. "Globalization seems to imply that whether you travel to the United States or to Thailand, what you get in terms of handmade soaps is invariably something made of European herbs such as lavender, rosemary or lemon grass. Even in Taiwan, you can buy Lush," he stated.
For Chiang, the idea of globalization is that local ingredients can prevent the world from becoming identical, while helping to create cultural diversity. "Have Americans never thought about making their own maize soap or traditional Indian herbal soap? Have the Japanese never come up with the idea of making use of their wasabi root?" he said, admitting that he has already started making laundry soap containing the green root.
"Since I am making soaps, of course I insist on using locally grown materials," he said, inviting foreign visitors to try everything that Taiwan's soil has to offer. "In five years, Yuan Soap will become a Taiwanese specialty," Chiang predicted, relishing the many opportunities offered by the unbeaten track he chose to follow two years ago.
Visit Yuan Soap at http://www.taiwansoap.com.tw.
This article first appeared in Taiwan Journal Feb. 1, 2008.
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