TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Lee sits on a bar stool in a plexiglass box near a highway offramp in central Taiwan. It's late afternoon and the 29-year-old is dressed in a red negligee, a fake rose planted firmly between her breasts.
"I work from noon to midnight, and it's psychologically tiring," she says. "Furthermore," she adds, pointing to her husband a few yards away, "he takes all the money."
Before you jump to conclusions, she isn't selling her body. In fact, she's using her body to sell . . . a spicy, addictive snack called betel nuts.
Lee, who doesn't want to give her first name, is a "betel nut beauty," one of thousands of women along Taiwan's highways hawking the date-like fruit of the areca palm to truckers and other mostly working-class customers.
The practice has been cheered on by male customers, condemned by feminist groups, decried by health professionals and pored over by sociologists keen to understand the island's "betel nut culture." But the aggressive sales tactics are credited with jump-starting a ho-hum industry: Betel nuts have supplanted sugar cane as Taiwan's second-largest crop, after rice.
Chewed widely in parts of Southeast Asia, India, Pakistan and the South Pacific, the betel nut is a stimulant popular as a hunger suppressant, breath freshener, tobacco substitute or simply for getting a mild buzz. Then there's the downside. Chewing betel nuts, which gives a kick akin to cigarettes, can lead to red-stained teeth, drooling, red-splotched sidewalks and oral cancer.
The betel nut's distinguished history dates to China's Six Dynasties period (220-589), when it was a treasured gift for royalty. In more recent years, Taiwan has moved this royal indulgence decidedly down-market. Now you can get betel nut soap, betel nut liquor, even betel nut chicken feed.
But the main show is roadside -- a cheap thrill, given that packages sell for a dollar or two.
"Basically, men are randy," says taxi driver Cheng Chunho, dipping into a plastic bag of "Hi Class Beetle Nut Crispy & Tasty." "I don't even like the stuff. But after a long day of driving, buying it provides a bit of excitement."
Suggestively dressed women in neon boxes on lonely highways would spell serious trouble in most countries. But attacks are rare, a fact sociologists attribute to Taiwan's relatively nonviolent, reserved culture.
