Psst -- Wanna buy some garlic?

For most of the last two decades Taiwan has imported garlic, unable to service its own demand for that ubiquitous ingredient. From time to time it surfaces in the news, in moments like this:

The businessmen bought the garlic at one yuan (20 US cents) per kilogram in China, and shipped them to Taiwan via North Korea.

As locally-grown garlic is in short supply ahead of Chinese New Year, with demand high as lots of garlic is used in cooking during the week-long festival, the smuggling ring hoped to reap profits by selling the Chinese garlic at 80 Taiwan dollars ($2.5) per kilo.

Taiwanese also like eating raw garlic when they eat noodles, dumplings or other dishes.

New Year's Eve is on February 6.

The smugglers could also be charged with fraud because they planned to pass off the Chinese garlic as Taiwanese, although Taiwan garlic is considered of better quality than Chinese garlic.

When police raided the warehouses, the smugglers claimed the garlic came from North Korea.

"Chinese garlic is not as spicy and tasty as Taiwan garlic. So the experts knew right away it was Chinese garlic," a police officer said.

The experts knew -- and so can you: if your garlic doesn't bite, it must be from China. The local Chinese paper today explained that Chinese garlic usually does not come complete in heads, but reduced to cloves instead. So if the garlic is sold whole, it is probably from Taiwan.

[Taiwan] [garlic]