By RK Shih/KHT Staff
PINGTUNG — More than 1,000 large watermelons were stood upright in Jiadong Township (佳冬鄉) on Friday as part of a Dragon Boat Festival event celebrating local farming traditions.
Jiadong is home to roughly 17,000 people, and just over half of that number are Hakka. It’s also the only coastal settlement among the Liudui Hakka villages (六堆客庄).
The event was held outside Guanghui Temple (廣惠宮), a Sanshan Guowang temple (三山國王廟), in Shiguangjian (石光見), a community known for watermelon seedling cultivation.
Pingtung County Magistrate Chou Chun-mi (周春米) joined thousands of residents and visitors for the noon challenge, when participants lined the street with upright watermelons.
County officials said about 5,000 people attended the event, which has become one of Jiadong’s main Dragon Boat Festival activities. This year’s program also included a watermelon design contest, a watermelon-eating contest, and a farmers’ market.
Chou said Jiadong’s grafted watermelon seedlings are known across Taiwan, with more than 60 percent of the nation’s watermelon seedlings coming from the township.
Jiadong Farmers’ Association Director-General Lin Shu-ling (林淑玲) said the watermelon-standing event began in 2018 with 168 watermelons but was suspended several times during the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, 1,000 groups registered, with participants and guests standing more than 1,000 watermelons along the street.
After the event, participants took home watermelons weighing more than 30 Taiwanese catties, or about 18 kilograms, each. County officials said the tradition is locally described as “watermelons returning to their mother’s home,” reflecting the township’s role in supplying seedlings that later grow into fruit around the country.
