Guanxi Mesona Grass Jelly 关西仙草

How it is made

Grass jelly is made by boiling down the stems and leaves of the mesona plant. In Taiwan the seedlings usually go in after the Qingming festival (清明节), on beds covered with black plastic to keep weeds down, and the crop is harvested after the Mid-Autumn Festival. Farmers pull the plants up by the roots with hoes, knock off the soil, and dry them in heaps in the sun before tying them in bundles. In Guanxi the harvest comes in September and the plants dry naturally in the jiujiang wind (九降风).

At the Guanxi Farmers' Association (关西镇农会) processing plant, dried mesona is cooked at high temperature in large steam kettles until its gum is released, then concentrated into the juice or powder used for jelly and tea.

Where it comes from

The variety grown mainly in Guanxi differs from those of central and southern Taiwan: it has the highest gum content and sets into jelly most easily, but it creeps along the ground and must be harvested entirely by hand. Mesona was once a crop planted on spare land and hillsides in slack farming seasons, and the tea was carried to the fields for farm workers; as mesona desserts grew more popular, Guanxi farmers turned rice fields over to it. Guanxi was designated the home of mesona under the one-township-one-product policy in 1989, has held a mesona festival almost every year since 2001, and gained a mesona production zone in 2015.

How it is eaten

Besides jelly, mesona is made into a cooling tea and into hot grass jelly (烧仙草). In Guanxi visitors can also try mesona chicken soup, chicken stewed in liquid from locally grown dried mesona, which the ministry describes as fragrant and sweet.