Taiwan Today

Government initiatives and private enterprises ensure local livelihoods and relaxing visitor experiences.

Yunlin County’s Gukeng Township in western Taiwan is home to Caoling Geopark, noted for its spectacular canyons and waterfalls, as well as over 500 hectares of moso bamboo forest. As part of the region’s tourist attractions, the Yunlin County Government (YCG) ­harvests the bamboo to provide materials for creative industries in neighboring Douliu City. Gukeng adjoins the township of Zhushan—literally meaning bamboo mountain—in central Taiwan’s Nantou County.

The Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) recognized the Bamboo Culture Park, which opened in Zhushan’s Fuzhou Village in 1997, as a model for incorporating agriculture, conservation, arts, crafts and park management. “We engage available agritourism resources to benefit the local economy,” said Chen Ching-fu (陳靖賦), manager of the cooperative that runs the park.

  The Bamboo Culture Park, with over 100 native and overseas varieties of bamboo, is located en route to Nantou’s perennially popular Xitou and Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area (NSA) and benefits from the continuous flow of tourists. At the site, visitors can connect with bamboo in construction, daily life and crafts. “Not only is bamboo a nostalgic material, but it also has art potential and sustainable applications with strong economic prospects,” Chen said. The park houses and displays collections, hosts research and informs the public about the plant. Visitors can also stay overnight surrounded by practical examples of the plant’s functional uses in floors, beds, chairs, tables, clothes hangers and personal cleansing products, as well as savory dishes such as bamboo shoots and rice steamed in bamboo tubes. In an inventive synergy between one of Taiwan’s most famous products and the traditional material, in 2014 the park set up a bike-making workshop that released a series of bamboo-frame bicycles to celebrate the facility’s 20th anniversary.

  Leisure Farms
The park is a major attraction in the MOA-designated Fuzhou Agriculture Tourism Area established in 2008 and operated by Fuzhou Leisure Farming Development Association. “In addition to a strong bamboo sector in Fuzhou, farmers here grow a variety of crops including guava, orange, pitaya, rice, tea and vegetables,” said Chen, who is also the group’s founding president. “Leisure farms form an ideal agritourist network by offering one- or two-day travel packages.” The association’s activities fit in well with the regional revitalization ­campaign launched in 2019 by the Cabinet-level National Development Council to revive local economies and bring community regeneration through agriculture, culture and tourism.

In recent years, similar projects by the MOA, Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Tourism Administration (TA), Ministry of Education and other government ­bodies have strengthened community development in townships and city districts across the country. The park and ­collaborative farms adopt a bottom-up approach, while government-initiated projects are top down. The combination assists a wide spectrum of local enterprises. “There are many meaningful and interesting practices to shed light on for visitors,” Chen said. “We cherish our roots and the traditions of bamboo culture and want to share them with locals and visitors alike.”

  New Park
The TA’s statistics show that in recent years, Yunlin’s Caoling area has grown in popularity, with visits rising from 277,000 in 2013 to 710,000 in 2020 and on to a historic high of 802,000 during the first 11 months of 2023. This approaches the 888,000 visitors to its more famous neighbor, Alishan National Forest Recreation Area, in the same period.

A further Caoling attraction made its debut last October when the new Shibi Bamboo Forest Park opened as a result of YCG’s exploration and development of around 100 hectares of county-owned land. The concept started with environmental surveys of the Shibi area by a team from National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Zhushan-headquartered Experimental Forest Administration, which oversees 32,000 hectares of woodland in Nantou spanning from the country’s tallest peak, Jade Mountain, to the south bank of the Zhuoshui River. Another team from NTU’s Taipei City-based School of Forestry and Resource Conservation collected basic data on fauna, flora and soil and built a monitoring system for rainfall, temperature, humidity, PM2.5 and negative air ions. Academics and specialists organized workshops to train “forest bathing” tour guides. NTU staff shared their management experience at Nantou’s Xitou Nature Education Area, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the country with visitor numbers logged by the TA nearing 1.5 million during the first 11 months of last year.

According to YCG’s Department of Culture and Tourism Director-General Stacie Chen (陳璧君), events like the annual Caoling Shibi Forest Bathing Festival are building an eco-tourism brand for low-carbon travel and physical and mental well-being. In April, Shibi Bamboo Forest Park is hosting the 12th edition of the World Bamboo Congress, co-organized by the MOA’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency and the Taiwan Bamboo Society. The latter is currently based in the northern city of Hsinchu at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University’s Graduate Institute of Architecture, another venue for the international event.

  “Caoling’s lush bamboo groves are giving tourists yet another reason to visit,” said YCG Magistrate Chang Li-shan (張麗善). “Bamboo-lined trails and art installations at Shibi Bamboo Forest Park charm visitors.” She is eager to see eastern Yunlin, spanning Gukeng, Douliu and Linnei Township, added to the TA’s list of NSAs. “The area has many appealing characteristics that include rich bamboo assets,” YCG’s Chen concurred, emphasizing that the NSA administration works closely with both central and local governments to effectively integrate recreation resources.

  The administration plays a significant role in improving and maintaining ­local infrastructure like ­parking, restrooms, road signs and utilities, which are all essential for the private business sector. The latter taps bamboo’s potential as a LOHAS—lifestyle of health and sustainability—resource, creating a constructive and imaginative framework to attract visitors. For both Zhushan’s Bamboo Culture Park and Caoling’s Shibi Bamboo Forest Park, the combination of government and private initiatives has proved to be a successful formula for not only opening up natural resources to the visiting public, but also stimulating local commerce and ­residents’ livelihoods. 
 

Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw