This was the prediction of the Provincial Highway Bureau in January 1959, for the East-West, cross-island highway.
Construction of 217 miles of road, including the branches, began in July 1956 with a budget of US$1,500,000 and NT$35,000,000. This was part of the US aid for resettlement of soldiers retired from the armed forces of the Republic of China. The total program encompasses the retirement and rehabilitation of nearly 80,000 servicemen. Over 5,000 of these retired servicemen-called RETSERS for short-and an equal number of other workers have been employed on this road project, entailing great physical risk over almost inaccessible mountains.
By the first of this year, 210 miles of the road had been opened to traffic, either from the east coast through the Taroko Gorge, or on the western side of the island. Only slightly over seven miles remained to be built. But in this case, the last seven miles were the hardest, for few-if any-roads in the world go over 11,000-foot passes. This most difficult section is the connecting link of East and West up in the high mountains of the Central Range.
The long New Year week-end gave me opportunity to traverse the cross-island highway from the west coast of Taiwan, as I had done from the east last July.
Leaving Taipei at 9:00 a.m. on New Year’s Day, our small party of three men and two women, in an ICA station-wagon with chauffeur, started off in high spirits. The day was bright and beautiful, the country interesting as always. We reached Tung-shih about 1:30 p.m. with ravenous appetites. A new Chinese restaurant did very well by us.
An hour later we pushed on — past the Tien-lun Dam, the Ku Kuan construction work, and the breathtaking Ta-chien gorge, site of (what will be) the world’s highest arch dam. From a sweeping curve in the highway we had a superb view of the deep gorge of the Ta-chia River, where high white lines on either side indicated the height of the abutments to be anchored there by 1965.
We reached Li-shan, and the Highway Bureau’s hostel where we were to stay, by dark. Though the cook was away for his New Year holiday, someone behind the scenes provided a surprisingly tasty Chinese meal, — four dishes, soup and rice. We had Hsinchu oranges with us for dessert.
Breakfast was less happy, for both cream and sugar were in the coffee, and a raw egg had been dropped in each bowl of congee. The following morning we were up and out in time to say we wanted the eggs cooked. We got them lightly fried, immersed in bowls of noodles, a better combination. And we made our own powdered coffee.
Early in the clear, cold morning we braved the chilly blasts to step out on the terrace of the hostel to see Mt. Sylvia, snow-capped, superbly beautiful in all the vast spread of the Central Range. Only Mt. Morrison (Jade Mountain) tops Mt. Sylvia in Taiwan, and it was not visible from our hostel. There had been three days of rain in what is usually a dry belt of the Central Range-but we had no snow or ice anywhere on our trip.
We planned to have the chauffeur take us as far as the road was finished. At that point I was to take the car back and visit the Lishan Farm for RETSERS, three miles from the hostel (mostly up); while the others were to hike along the trail toward the Ho- Huan Pass, the point where the road comes up from the East Coast (through the Taroko Gorge).
We drove around one hidden curve after another, past two sawmills, over timber or concrete bridges. The Ta-chia River, blue as the sky, rippled over rocks far below. Suddenly, as we were about to cross another bridge of sturdy timbers, men from a highway station shouted a warning to us. At the farther end of this new bridge, we could see small rocks rattling down, half-covering the road. The slide was intermittent in action. When all was quiet, it was easy to hurry over the debris on foot-the car could not pass. But when there was a low rumbling of small stuff above, one could watch the little rocks gaining momentum and bringing bigger ones along. I saw a good-sized tree topple, but it was caught by other trees and undergrowth and did not come down to the road.
We all hiked on, past the highway station (which I visited coming back) and around a sweeping curve. After a mile or so, I let the rest go on without me. They hiked for several hours, along the bar of the “H” connecting the two roads. One road starts at Feng-yuan and winds up the Ta-chia River (over which we had come) and angles northeast from Lishan to reach the east coast atYi-lan. The other starts on the west coast at Taichung, goes through Pu-li to the Wu-sheh Dam and over the Central Range to come down to the coast eventually through the Taroko Gorge.
As I crossed the new bridge this time, I found an 8 x 8 timber at the slide-end split off and lying on the bridge. Fortunately it was a part of the siding, not the underpinning. Away across the valley now, I saw a yellow bull-dozer working on another slide caused by the recent rains. I could make out tiny figures moving at a snail’s pace along the highway,— my companions. Stopping the car, I “yoo-hoo’d” with all my might, and the chauffeur honked the horn. Sure enough, they heard us-and waved back before they disappeared around another curve.
I have seen the sketches for a dozen hostels or lodges to be built in different parts of Taiwan’s Central Range. Some will be in traditional Chinese architecture with curving tile-roofs. At a place called Feng-Yang, at high elevation, a modern ski-lodge is planned, and at Shan-Yuan there will be skating on a lake high in the mountains. In the Central Range, which runs as a mountainous spine from one end of this beautiful isle to the other, there are 10 mountain peaks of more than 10,000 feet, most of which have been scaled. The whole range is spectacularly beautiful. Because of the heavy rainfall on most of the island, mountains up to 9,000 feet are generally green with conifers and cypress. There are places where the virgin timber: has been laid waste by aboriginal carelessness with fire. These must be reforested. There are some sheer rock-walls, and many peaks quite blue in the distance.
The Taroko Gorge can rival any elsewhere. I have seen the Gorges du Cians and da Luis in the Maritime Alps of France. They are, deservedly, a Mecca for tourists. But once tourism hits its stride on Taiwan, people will come from all parts of the free world to view the spectacular beauty of the Taroko Gorge, with its precipitous cliffs, its green slopes aflame with azaleas, the magnificent highway cut under overhanging rock-shelves, or tunneling through the rock. There are 35 tunnels in the first fifteen miles of the gorge, and little wayside shrines or monuments to commemorate the engineers or army veterans who lost their lives to build the road. For a time, on the Taroko end of the road, it was costing three lives per mile.
RETIRED SERVICEMEN
When I returned to the hostel, I had a quick lunch, and then asked the chauffeur to take me up to the Li-shan Farm. This is only one of many opened up by the Vocational Assistance Commission for Retired Servicemen known as VACRS. This one above Li-shan is on a wonderful plateau of 1500 acres, at an elevation of 7,000 feet. Thirty RETSERS who have worked on the East-West highway are working the farm now. There is room for another two or three hundred.
Each veteran is given an acre and a half of land as his own. They also do certain things cooperatively. For instance, with the help of VACRS and JCRR they have set out 2,000 fruit trees and started several mushroom nurseries. This year they will set out 8,000 more fruit-tree saplings, which in three years will be yielding profitable crops of apples, pears, peaches and cherries for an island whose lowlands are too hot for such fruits. They are working on their own irrigation from a mountain stream, as (oddly enough for an island with the world’s fourth’ highest rainfall) this part of the Central Range is dry.
The mushroom industry, like the fruit orchards, should prove immensely lucrative. Both Chinese and Americans on this island are fond of mushrooms, which in the past came in the dried form from Hong Kong’s new territories. Up in the hills, a certain type of wood is cut in four-foot lengths. Holes are bored for the mushroom seeds to be planted. A few burst forth the first year, but each year thereafter the wood is covered with delicious types of edible mushrooms-phallinede, tremellinede and agaricaceae-to use the scientific names I saw on charts. No one spoke enough English to tell me their popular names, but I understood the contillellios was the “best kind”, and it looked like a flower mushroom.
The allotting of land to retired servicemen is part of the government’s land-to-the-tiller program. In 1935 the national government announced that after the mainland is recovered all soldiers will be given a piece of land for their own. But waiting for that was too much like “Pie in the sky bye and bye”. So land-claim certificates were given to soldiers for future use on Taiwan. In 1956 land over in coast valleys near Yi-lan was made into a cooperative farm for solders who were retiring from the army. About 1280 RETSERS worked the Yi-lan farm collectively for a year. Then-in October 1957-Governor Chou Chih-jou, who likes to call himself a “retired soldier”, handed out land deeds to the new farmers, giving each a plot of individually- owned land, as well as collective ownership of the original farm.
To Americans a veterans’ program means a pension plan, but on Formosa, where money is too scarce for adequate pensions, the aim of the VACRS program is to rehabilitate the men and make them a productive part of the island’s civilian economy. This in itself was an enormous undertaking. Yet the basic aim, therefore the more important achievement of the program, was to increase the combat effectiveness of the national armed forces, by weeding out the over-aged, chronically ill, ineffective men, and replace them with sturdy youth through the military draft.
Today the economic potentialities of the undertaking show great promise. Those most closely connected with VACRS believe it was just what was needed to spark a development plan for the uplands and remote mountain areas. Besides the possibilities in the orchards and mushroom nurseries, the grazing of cattle and sheep and goats, there is wealth untold in the millions of cubic feet of timber, and in minerals such as marble, asbestos, gold, iron, copper and graphite.
On the return trip from Lishan I saw other projects for the RETSERS -showing what has been done with and for the 75,000 who have been separated from Free China’s armed forces to date.
Our return looked dubious for a time. Word came to the highway hostel of a bad break in the road above Ta-chien, due to a slide. It would be some days before our station-wagon, or any other motor vehicle, could cross the break. The men of our party worked out a message to be phoned to Taichung, and relayed to Taipei by wire, requesting another car to travel all night and meet us at the far side of the slide on Saturday, January 3rd. The Highway Bureau, however, felt responsible for the broken road and sent a light truck to meet us. A car from Taipei came down in daylight Saturday to Taichung, and the chauffeur had the overnight’s rest before we started north.
That break in the road was an awesome sight. One great block of granite (like the famous foundation stones of the temple in Baalbeck, except that this was a triangular wedge) had been jarred or pressured loose from the rock wall above the road; crashed hundreds of feet down to the Ta-chia River below, taking a great chunk of the highway with it. We had ample space to walk on the inner edge of the road, over not too much debris, but dared not look at the gaping hole in the beautiful cross-island highway. Between that and the river below was “plenty of nothing”.
A banding of huge stones was already being carefully built up from a firm ledge thirty feet below the level of the road which, when reinforced, would again carry the weight of heavy trucks and buses above. It took most of the day for us to get to Taichung.
On January 4, heading north, we made a number of stops to see other VACRS projects. It was still the New Year week-end, and Sunday besides, so in most places only part of the usual force was working.
Each RETSER village was made up of neat grey dormitories, scrupulously clean inside and out, usually with flower-beds showing great care. In the workrooms of one village we found the men weaving split-bamboo baskets to hold the wine-bottles of the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly. With incredible speed the veterans made their fingers fly, in and out, out and in, till the four sides of a basket were woven. Others had the bottoms and the covers ready.
In another village we found the RETSERS making ordinary match-boxes. Among them were a number of the handicapped-former soldiers who had lost one hand or arm. It was amazing to see men with one hand daub paste on the purple strips of paper and roll the tiny boxes in it as fast as the Vets with two hands. Competition was evidently keen, the man with one hand eager to earn as much as his neighbor with two.
The next stop showed work requiring greater skill — the weaving of the type of grass-matting which covers the floors of most homes in Taiwan. The raw material is a reedy plant resembling sisal, which grows in clumps along the seashore-on the nearby beaches of these west coast places. It is gathered, shredded, dried and woven into one-foot squares. What we saw was in its natural color, but of course it is often dyed green or magenta-red, and alternated with the natural tan in rugs of checkerboard pattern.
We pushed on to RETSER villages where handicrafts gave way to industry, with looms (for hooked rugs), or sewing-machines (for soldier’ garments), or machinery for making furniture as fine as any on Taiwan. At the moment, the men were working on an order for all the wooden furniture for the new Veterans’ General Hospital at Peitou. Tables, chairs, and desks were being sand-papered to velvet smoothness, ready for the stain and varnish.
All this was extremely interesting - and I would say inspiring. Here were soldiers who in the old days would have been discharged and set adrift, a drag on society if they knew nothing but soldiering. If they had families, they might return to the farm. Until recently, here on Taiwan few had families. Today, of course, there are many island-born Chinese in the armed forces. But what a drag on society 75-80,000 mainland servicemen would have been without the VACRS program.
Instead, they have been rehabilitated, given training for a useful livelihood, and are happy in their new life of independence. Some had artificial legs - a great improvement over the peg-legs of the ragged ex-soldiers we used to see on the mainland.
There was one sad place - not because the men were not cheerful and as hearty in their welcome to us as the others. But it was a home for the old and the handicapped, where they live on two tiers in a bleak dormitory. Some looked ill, or perhaps they huddled under their covers because the day was bitterly cold. But others sat on their tatami playing a game with one or two buddies. One was getting out his food for his own meal (with no means of heating it, as far as I could see.) To be sure, they had warm clothing, and bedding, and food - but would a few games, books and magazines be possible - maybe a radio?
The American assigned by ICA to coordinate the many facets of the VACRS program is Albert Fraleigh, who led our little party of five to the Lishan Farm and back. The heart-warming welcome he received at every project visited, not only indicated that he had been to all these places many times before, but also showed the genuine friendship between the retired servicemen and this American who has given himself so wholeheartedly to their welfare. He has also attempted (with less response) to share his vision of the contribution this pioneering can make to the economy of the Isle Beautiful. His imminent transfer to Laos will be to that country’s gain, but to Taiwan’s (and VACRS’) loss.
Yet Bert Fraleigh would be the first to say that he deserves little of the honor and glory for the success of the VACRS program. (Those who know will not underestimate the part he has played.) He himself pays enthusiastic tribute to the man who heads the program, General Chiang Ching-kuo, elder son of the President. No one else does General Chiang’s “leg-work” for him. Like the good soldier he is, and like a good newsman (in a field which is not his), he goes himself to inspect the work, to encourage the men, to find the problems and solve them.
There was a time when the RETSERS on this road in the high altitudes looked weary, ill and unhappy. Bert Fraleigh discovered that they had not been paid for months, and were not getting enough food to keep up their strength. He reported to Chiang Ching-kuo. The energetic, forthright general set out for the mountains himself. Retired generals, in charge of the men working on the highway, tried to brief him with plausible explanation. He brusquely bypassed them-spent a day talking with the men on the job. To make a long story short, a couple of speculating generals who caused the delay are now in jail, a number of forestry and highway people are no longer connected with VACRS, and the men are paid directly on the 5th and 20th of every month. Today they are well-fed and happy.
Most of the veterans working on the road have savings now. Then they present their certificate for a plot of land, where along with raising their own vegetables, they can have an orchard, raise chickens, perhaps a hog or two for a money-crop. No drag on society these.
No attempt has been made here to describe the medical phases of the VACRS program, as it was not a part of this trip. I have previously visited the beautiful, new, 600-bed General Hospital nearing completion in Peitou. I know there are others at Changhua, Chiayi, Puli (some for TB) and an addition to the Lo-Sheng Leprosarium for the former soldiers afflicted with that dread disease. I did see on the trip an elaborate clinic of many rooms, with the best of X-ray and operating equipment from the USA installed, which stands as a “white elephant”-no staff or patients, quite idle (except for the use of a room or two as offices.) This is a monument to the “ugly American” type of bungling, through inexperience and over-planning, of experts who came to initiate the VACRS program and advise the Chinese-without knowing China. Fortunately, today the program is in the hands of practical people who, Americans and Chinese, cooperate harmoniously along lines consistent with the Chinese economy and culture.
Moving slowly at first - and with some of the initial mistakes of inexperience (as mentioned) - the program is now nearing a successful completion. The primary objective of removing the ineffective, to make the armed forces physically fit and combat-ready, has been achieved.
The secondary aim of assisting the discharged to find permanent employment in farm and forest work, in highway construction or maintenance, in private industry or public service enterprises, is pressing forward to its goal.
All the development projects, designed to create employment, are geared to the normal civilian economy in order to make a call for further US support unnecessary, and to make the maximum contribution to the economy of the island. The projects which are national in scope will repay the initial cost, probably many times over, in the years to come. Tea-planting, fisheries, farming and orchards, forestry and processing of lumber, are among these. On an island three-fourths mountainous, with 10,000,000 people squeezed onto narrow coastal plains, the opening up of the mountain areas is of inestimable value. The sites discovered for hydroelectric plants to provide power for the rapidly expanding industry of Taiwan number 10, and may triple the power-supply of the island.
Finally, the magnitude of the untapped resources of the mountain areas opened up by the East-West cross-island highway - a road started at both ends by the Japanese and abandoned because of the seemingly inaccessible heights-may prove to be the most fruitful facet of the entire program for the retirement and subsequent reactivation of the veterans of China’s armed forces.