Frontier Livelihoods by Sarah Turner Christine Bonnin Jean Michaud

Author:Sarah Turner, Christine Bonnin, Jean Michaud [Sarah Turner, Christine Bonnin, Jean Michaud]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, Southeast Asia, Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9780295805962
Google: 8w41CgAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2015-06-08T02:52:02+00:00

Market knowledge and networks are important assets. Unlike Hmong growers and Kinh and Giáy intermediaries, and much as in the case of alcohol entrepreneurs (see chapter 5), Kinh wholesalers in Sa Pa Town and Lào Cai City can access crucial regional, national, and international market information on cardamom availability, demand, and prices, including Chinese trends (Zaifu 1991). Kinh wholesalers also have well-established cross-border trade networks with China, and their extensive trade experience augments the networking and communication skills required for cross-border negotiations; in livelihood terms, the wholesalers are loaded with the necessary access to human, social, and financial capital.

One such Kinh wholesaler with whom we talked in Lào Cai City (fig. 6.6) ran her business out of the ground-floor garage of her house, in which over one hundred sacks of about one hundred kilos of dried cardamom each were piled up—a total of about ten metric tons. While this wholesaler collected cardamom from intermediaries arriving from Sa Pa, Văn Bàn, and Bát Xát Districts, she explained that most of it was arriving from Sa Pa—no doubt thanks to the national park. Since 1999 she has been trading cardamom to Chinese wholesalers who visit her house from November through February, shortly after harvest. These traders travel from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, and from Guangxi Province to collect her product (fig. 6.7). In 2010, she told us that there were six cardamom wholesalers based in Lào Cai City, and claimed that all of the others were moving more produce than she was.

PROCESSING TOWARD CONSUMPTION IN CHINA AND VIETNAM

Most cardamom grown in Vietnam is bound for China. Once across the border, Han wholesalers (fig. 6.5, Point E) transport the dried cardamom to Kunming and beyond, where it is distributed to Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturers (fig. 6.5, Point F). It is here that Vietnamese cardamom chains often merge with local Yunnan commodity chains from Wenshan and Honghe Prefectures. The Chinese pharmaceutical industry is estimated to buy an average of two thousand tons of cardamom annually, half of which is produced domestically, and half imported from Vietnam, Laos, and Burma (Zaifu 1991). In Kunming’s processing houses, the cardamom is ground into a fine powder or pressed for its oil before being made into various pharmaceutical products sold in the consumer markets of East Asia (fig. 6.5, Point G).

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