WAR IN CHINA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 August 1939, Page 9

WAR IN CHINA

EFFECT ON FUNGUS MARKET. The War in China does not seem to effect New Zealand much but one unusual trade is suffering from the effects of the conflict. The market for fungus, which is still grown in some of the bush districts. has been dealt a disastrous blow. It is just about 70 years since Chew Chong, a Chinese storekeeper, at New Plymouth, found out the value of fungus as a marketable commodity, and offered to buy as much of it as the struggling settlers of that time were able to gather from the stumps in the bush clearings which settlement had and was making. What the kauri gum industry was in Auckland, so the fungus industry was to Taranaki in those early days.

Although Taranaki was the birthplace of the fungus industry, it was not many years till the trade in fungus spread over all the bush districts in the Dominion. Not long after the Great War, when dried, it was worth 8d a lb. and was then quite a thriving industry. When Chew Chong first bought it he paid Id a lb. for it. but the price rose during the years to about 3d or 4d a lb., the Maoris being the chief gatherers. The demand for the fungus was unlimited in China because of the use which was made of it for culinary purposes. especially in the making of vegetable soup, but at the moment its sale is at the lowest ebb.