Taiwan Today

"Really so cold, even in south Taiwan?"

"Yes, really, 'cause increased altitudes mean decreased temperatures. "

"DUST is penetrating and suffocating in unpaved road areas." "It's OK, we can close the windows."

"You'll find it will come in anyway."

Our trip over the 182.6-kilometer South-Cross Highway was preceded by much kindly-­ intended advice from friends who had already toured there—adding only to our eagerness to be on our way.

In the tropical warmth of the south­ern city of Tainan, chilly temperatures were beyond imagining. We worried, instead, whether we would find food easily along the highway, and the night before starting the trip, we purchased ample field rations in Tainan-instant noodles, canned foods, cookies and fruits, and an electric kettle for boiling water. It all proved a great boon later.

The first day, breathing in the fresh morning air, we set out briskly on our way to Chiahsien at the western terminus of the South-Cross. Unfamiliar with the area, we stopped the car on a roadside to inquire of passersby, four or five of whom warmheartedly engaged in describing to us the entire route. Then, a middle-aged man on a motorcycle, who overheard, invited us to follow him since he was also headed for Chiahsien. Thus, at the very beginning of our trip, a human touch along the road invited us to consider that open spaces open human minds.

The South-Cross is the third cross­-island highway for Taiwan. It cuts across southern parts of the great Central Mountain Range in three counties—Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Taitung. Since the area is part of the mountain reserve­ regulated for conservation and aboriginal rights protection—we registered first at the Chiahsien Police Station.

Starting out, we immediately encountered the dust. Two motorcycling couples—the girls on back-all loaded up with full hiking equipment, preceded our car, leaving behind them a thick cloud of flying dust.

And as we drove, the dust grew thicker-or seemed to. It cleverly penetrated the seams of the tightly­-closed car, which we had carefully stuffed, without obvious effect. The dust odor was irritating, choking, and we much regretted having failed to purchase gauze masks the previous night.

Accordingly, the first thing on reach­ing Laonung, we bought masks at a drugstore. When the proprietor casually ad­vised us, "When your masks get dirty, throw them away and use clean ones," we were stunned. How many gauze masks would be needed to get through to the end of the line?

Setting out from Laonung "en­mask," we were now able, to turn our attention more fully to the landscape. However, not without some effort.

Although the sun was shining bright, the stirred-up dust, like a dense fog, obscured the view every time we came across another moving vehicle.

The western section of the highway between Chiahsien and Meishan, about fifty-five kilometers, follows Laonungchi Creek through several aboriginal vil­lages, including Paolai, Kaochung, Tao­yuan, and Meilan, which were linked for full commerce with the rest of the island when the highway opened to traffic in 1972. Road sections around the villages are asphalt-paved, offering us opportunities to roll the windows down for welcome, fresh-air moments.

When we finally arrived at Meishan Shanchuang, about noon, each of us had aged a generation within hours—our hair and everything else exposed had turned dust-grey.

Meishan Shanchuang is the locale of one of three look-alike hostels along the South-Cross built by the China Youth Corps as resting spots for travelers. We were booked here for the night, but since it was still early and the prime scen­ery along the route not yet at hand, we decided to go on 25 kilometers further eastward to Tienchih, taking a chance of a forced return if we could not locate accommodations.

Tienchih, elevation 2,205 meters, is an important stop for South-Cross Highway Bureau buses coming both easterly from Taitung and westerly from Tainan. Charter tourist buses usually take a break here too.

The Highway and Forestry Bureau work stations offer the only accommoda­tions at Tienchih. Fortunately, it was no holiday, and the Forestry Bureau had vacancies to accommodate us. But there was no food, and we had to make three successive meals of instant noodles. Oh that we had bought something else!

After a 3:00 p.m. lunch, we visited the most eye-catching structure in Tien­chih, the white-walled, red-tiled Chang Chun Tsu (Perpetual-Spring Shrine), a traditional Chinese structure on a hillside breached by hundreds of stairs. The shrine commemorates the men—mostly armed forces veterans-who died build­ing the highway through the mountains. A board inscribed Ling Shuang Chang Tsun (Forever Lives the Spirit) hangs at the center of the shrine.

Tienchih (Heaven's Pool) got its name from a small heart-shaped pond in a mountain depression about 500 meters back of the shrine. About 20 meters wide and 50 meters long, the pool has no visible sources, but keeps full all year round, depending, reportedly, solely on the rain.

Within half an hour of our climb to the pool, the sunny brilliance of the day had given way to gray and gloom, over­come by a growing fog. Mountain winds now blew in one damp fog wave after another, and the highland chill grew colder every minute. The bustling noises surrounding the milling tourists now died out as they departed on waiting buses. And around the shrine, flying crows called hoarsely-a husky, crying sound: "Awh, Awh." How sad to hear it now in this suddenly somber and deso­late place. The crow, in China, is linked to death, and we wondered now in the eerie ambience if these were incarna­tions, lingering about their shrine-home.

The fog gathered so thickly that it soon entirely obscured the surrounding mountains; only the memory of their 3,000-meter peaks persisted.

One staff member of the Forestry Bureau told us these were clouds, not fog, and that if lucky enough, we could witness the grandeur of a multi-color cloud-sea at dawn. "The cloud-banks must be thick enough, and there must be no wind to blow them away," he said.

Looking forward to a wakeup scene of cloud-seas and, afterwards, the vaunted scenery eastward on our route, we all went to bed early.

The night at Tienchih was so silent that we—urban dwellers—experienced a little tinnitus, real or imagined.

The noisy cries of the crows had long since ceased, without our being truly aware. And a deep darkness now pervaded all, except for the skies, where unbelievable hordes of stars were naughtily twinkling in a childhood dream of fairyland.

What an experience!" I thought. —Just open your eyes and there are the mountains, smiling brightly and saying "good morning" to you!

In various degrees of green, the mountains were solidly there, rank by rank, unchanged from time immemorial.

At least philosophically, the Chinese are a mountain-loving people. Over the ages, scholarly hermits who looked down upon fame and wealth from habita­tions in the deep mountains have been regarded as sages, choosing more wisely than their fellow men. "The benevolent love mountains," said Confucius, be­cause "the mountains are stable and firm" like their own moral integrity.

A line from a verse by Tao Yuan-ming (Tsin Dynasty, 265-420 A.D.), Picking chrysanthemums under east-lying fences and leisurely gazing on Nan Shan (Chungnan Mountain), has become "immortal." It is still referred to by Chinese contemplating the attractions of nature.

Finally, exposure to ice-cold water, morning mists, and a chill morning breeze dispelled the last remaining sleepiness.

But still, "How charming my view of the green mountains; I hope the moun­tains so view me." Our morning glimpses of the peaks were filled with a poetic enchantment.

Owing to the mountain moisture, we now shook off the problems of flying dust on the road section east of Tienchih, an area particularly favored by hikers. Here is Kuai Ku (Juniper Valley), about three kilometers east of Tienchih, its environs clad in massive, aged Chinese junipers. The biggest trees are about eight arms-around and tower to the skies in arrogant postures.

Forestry Bureau lumbermen and reforestation workers, along with assortments of fully-loaded trucks, were busy on their errands. We, of the city, seizing our precious opportunity, prepared for a hike—a "green shower" while admiring nature's uncanny craftsmanship in shap­ing her trees.

The white shrine we had visited, most conspicuous now inlaid in its green mounts, played hide-and-seek with us as we passed between sunny and shady roadside slopes leading to the Ta Kuan Shan Tunnel.

At Yakou, the tunnel, 615 meters in length, marks the highest point of the South-Cross, an elevation of 2,714 meters. It also marks the boundary line between Kaohsiung and Taitung Counties.

When we entered the tunnel near noon, the weather on its west side was gloomy and moist-cold, below 10°C.

Through the tunnel, on the other side, brilliant sunlight shone from floating mists, and the temperature was about 6°C higher.

The "Kuanshan Cloud-Sea," a famous experience along the South-Cross, in proper circumstances, explodes into view at the eastern opening of the tunnel. But not for us. The circumstances of our arrival included high winds, which had destroyed the cloud accumula­tion. We stood there on the slope of Kuanshan experiencing, instead, an eerie invasion of waves of mist that con­tinuously curled up from deep valleys below, soon completely enveloping us.

Now we were to profoundly compre­hend Tang Dynasty poet Pai Chu-i's (772-846) elegant line: " ... there is a gathering of immortals' mountains on the seas, which hold themselves in a floating, near intangible state."

It was a magician's show before a sapphire-blue stage curtain. The ethereal transformations and re-compositions of the mists about the mountains were too quick for our eyes to take in, or our minds to shape.

A man-tall rock bearing the Chi­nese characters for Yakou Shan-chuang finally drew our attention. A narrow uneven path near the rock, almost overgrown with vegetation, curved downwards, so wild looking that we could not be sure if it was really the way to the hostel we now sought, the second to be set up by the China Youth Corps along the South-Cross.

Down the unlikely path, the Yakou Police Station, a tiny building flying a national flag, came into view. A man apply­ing a new coat of paint pointed the way to Yakou Shanchuang, visually behind the police station, invisible from our initial vantage.

Surrounded on three sides by moun­tains and frontally facing a valley, the hostel stands silent and pristine, isolated from the world.

A twin of Meishan Shanchuang, yellow-roofed, white-walled Yakou Shanchuang is the only purveyor of shel­ter and food in the area, and it so served us on the third day of our South-Cross tour.

After lunch, the more energetic of our party took a look around the area while the rest of us—all, evidently, unliberated females-took a nap on a big rock platform in front of the square in the warm, early afternoon sunshine; immensely comfortable, like snoozy kit­tens, we were reluctant to get up.

We set off that afternoon intending to stop and purchase foodstuffs in Litao, some 30 kilometers from Yakou. But we had not prepared well, and finding our gas low, feared it would be insufficient since there was no gasoline station along the highway ahead. Besides, fog was gathering, thicker and thicker, and soon the visibility had dropped to below 10 meters, perhaps in Guinness competition with London's famous fog. The road was narrow and twisting, skirting invisible, bottomless valleys. We turned back at Hsiangyang, still two-thirds of the way from our goal.

Within just two hours, the tempera­ture had sharply dropped and all evi­dences of sunlight had been sinisterly concealed.

We relied now on foglights and a beeping horn to warn oncoming cars at the curves. And all of us so concentrated our attention on our forward way that we seemed, literally, participants in a dream ... or a terror film, becoming more than a little uneasy, even dizzy.

The hostel at Yakou provided a dinner with rice and four simple dishes. Though hardly luxurious, it was exceptionally delicious after four successive meals of instant noodles.

It was not yet hiking season (which coincides with student vacations), and the hostel, with accommodations for about 200, had but one lodger in addition to our group—a merchant who had set out from Taitung that morning, planning to arrive in Kaohsiung the same night, fog permitting. He commented that the sparse population along the South-Cross accounts for the lack of interest by investors in developing various facilities in the region.

Full darkness now enveloped the mountain range. The hostel's lights were the only imperfections in an otherwise complete, utterly-blind black ambience. A television set here functioned like a radio—only sound could be received. At such a high up, dark-drenched, ice­-chilled spot in the night, the hostel radiated a special homelike feeling—con­tendedly warm, relaxingly safe.

At midnight, I woke up to find a shower of bright moonlight spraying the world outside the window. One of our photographers rushed out with high hopes of picturing "the midnight skies at elevation 2,714 meters." I followed him.

Automobiles in the front courtyard were now coated with a thin layer of frost, indicating a temperature drop below 5°C.

The clear moonshine and bright stars reminded me of a somewhat controversial line from a verse by our con­temporary poet Yu Kwang-chung: "Tonight's skies are very Greek." For me, this night's skies, at least, were not so Greek as they were Yakou (which lit­erally means "silent ").

The next dawn, before breakfast, we drove back to the Ta Kuan Shan Tunnel to photograph the cloud-sea. However, we were again disappointed as the clouds were still too thin to fluoresce in the grandeur of the mountain sunrise.

After breakfast, Mr. Lin, manager of the Yakou Shanchuang, showed us some sixty "bonsai" junipers he had dis­covered, dug, brought back, and potted via explorations in the deep mountains. Although none were taller than one meter, the trees (juniperus rigida) were all more than six centuries old. Growing at elevations above 3,400 meters, they were stunted by harsh environments and intense ultraviolet rays. According to Mr. Lin, most of the potted junipers seen around Taiwan represent varieties imported from abroad. His Yakou juni­per "bonsai" are among the few around that are "native sons."

When we left Yakou, it was wrapped in morning mist. Large clouds above, hating to part with us, now dispatched little white envoys to escort us solicitously almost to Hsiangyang, where the thick fog of yesterday afternoon continued to permeate the area, blinding our vision.

We stopped and got out to stroll in the fog. And that dream-like feeling came again—nothing could seen, but the ground was there to tread.

I walked on, alone, in the hovering fog. And sometimes, an itinerant hill gust would dissipate the foggy mass and reveal elegant mountains spotted with frost-bitten red maple trees; then, almost immediately, the fog would win over the cleared space again.

I walked where withered maple leaves had dropped, carpeting the road in a pleasing, crinkly red. Poetry is hidden in fallen red leaves ... "light were my footsteps." Most of Taiwan lacks the frost to call out the redness.

"When winter's chill came visiting the mountains, those green leaves sud­denly grew melancholy. So heavy was their melancholy that they could bear it no longer and, sifting down through the air, spread their thin texture on the earth." I was overcome by the writer's blueness. But, dejection was not the real nature of his forest, for "when spring's earth wakens, they are now the blood of the soil." Thus, our ancient poet's (Kung Tzu-chen, 1792-1840 compre­hension that "fallen red is not emotion­ less, but transforms into spring suste­nance to assure the flowers." In a foggy woods, meditation is lighthearted—no blue lamentations for nature's cycles ... for life's mortality.

The weather warmed, and the car seemed almost to glide down to Motien, where, as in the west, flying dust made us mostly aware of our own irritation. Farmhouses and vegetable gardens, mostly for cabbages, appeared, forerun­ning a residential district, a group of structures in the distant bottom of an empty valley. Our spirits soared. It was the first population—the first village­—since Tienchih.

Litao Shanchuang is a carbon copy of the other two South-Cross China Youth Corps hostels and the most color­ful building in this matter-of-fact Bunu village.

After we checked in at the hostel and downed the late lunch, Mr. Wu, the hostel manager guided us around.

The village centers along a paved central road running straight back from the hostel. Current excavation work to bury new tap water mains created a disor­der familiar in every town. Establishing a tap water system is especially difficult work in a mountain valley, though, since the water is drawn from remote sources.

According to Mr. Wu, the Bunu vil­lagers originally lived at scattered places in the mountains. During the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, however, the authorities forced them to move to this valley plain for control purposes. At pre­sent, Litao houses some 40 families—a total population of some 500 persons.

It was late afternoon and most houses were empty, the occupants off for fieldwork on the mountain slopes, where the main crops are corn and cabbage.

Due to the government policy for mountain area reserves, all village resi­dents are Bunu tribesmen with only a few exceptions-people who settled in Litao before the highway was built.

We crossed the hostel's basketball court to two groceries which sell daily necessities. One serves, also, as a sort of telephone-central—the Han proprietor broadcasts the name of the recipient of a call over a loudspeaker, and the "callee" comes to the grocery to answer it.

In half an hour, we had already toured the small village when Mr. Wu was called back to receive two busloads of high-school students off on a graduation tour.

Several teenage Bunu youths, back from the fields, were now playing basket-ball on the hostel court, and when we walked back, two of our party asked to join them.

Bunu men are known among Tai­wan's aboriginal tribes as the most skill­ful with the bow and arrow. And though not tall, these Bunu youths demonstrated an eye for the basket no less accurate than for archery targets. Sports are a shortcut to friendships, and soon we had all introduced each other.

Earlier, we had been informed that the scenery around Hsiangyang is the most spectacular for the whole South­-Cross trip, but had unfortunately met twice now only with Hsiangyang's fog. Unwilling to miss the route's star spectacle, we now drove back for our third visit. Hsiangyang, for the first time, lit­erally deserved its poetic name, which means "Facing the Sunlight." Hsi­angyang's beauty lies in its delicacy, Tienchih's in its grandeur. It might be said that Tienchih expresses the vigor of a youth, and Hsiangyang the grace of a maiden.

We returned to Litao and visited the village school at 4:00 p.m., as it began broadcasting children's songs. It was playground-cleanup time, a feature at most primary schools, and a fit of sweet childhood memories gushed over all of us.

On the big playground, little boys sweeping the grounds were also taking the brooms as play weapons and running and laughing around. Some sang along with the broadcast, their voices loud and clear.

Seeing us approaching, these brilliant-eyed children greeted us politely, saying hello with a little bow. A young teacher told us that the principal had taken the bigger students to handball competitions in Taitung, and now only half the students were there.

Litao village's mini primary school serves just 48 pupils and seven teachers, but is probably, according to Mr. Wu, "the highest school" on the island—at an elevation of 1,068 meters. For higher learning, the children go to school at Kuanshan, some 50 kilometers east of Litao. Most village children studying at Kuanshan are boarders, with fee subsi­dies from the government.

We had been invited by the youths we had met earlier to view their tradi­tional dance practice that night in prepa­ration for a Christmas celebration, the village's most important festival.

A church service was still in progress when we arrived, and we sat on the back seats, uncomprehending, as the preaching was in the Bunu language.

It was a little noisy; babies carried on the backs of several young women were crying. Nevertheless, the assembly did not seem to mind, and their piety was visibly solemn and unhindered.

After the service, using Ami tribal music but their own dance routines, the Bunu dancers, in a large circle, practiced, in two rounds, 10 different dances. Their movements were graceful and rhythmic.

Most of the boy dancers, who must work in the fields, were younger than the girls, because most of the teenage girls are free to go off working in textile or electronic plants or studying in the towns. According to a church presbyter, the tribesmen are now all converted to Christianity, and the traditional festival dances and ritual clothing are mostly re­served for Christmas day.

Stepping down the village road under a brilliant moon, one of our group sighed, "Don't you feel that this society is truly coordinated with nature? Even the old women dance so seriously and naturally ... and the children are open; it all gives me a special feeling of innocent pleasure."

The final section of the tour offers a specially exciting spectacle: East from Litao, the highway curves along Hsinwulu Creek, which cuts the mountains via the grand Wulu Gorge.

The direct distance across the gorge is very short, and the road is built along snake curves, following the contours of the opposing mountains. Chiseled-out mid-slope, the roadway is no less formidable than the East-West Cross-Island Highway through the Taroko Gorge.

Standing on Tienlong Bridge, suspended on red cables over the gorge, the traveler is offered a panorama of the spectacle, and he himself becomes part of the picture, too.

A rocky cliff along the river gradually takes over the gorge at Hsinwu, where the Hsinwulu meets Talun Creek.

As our tour neared its end, the clouds floated higher and higher and the plain spread wider and wider.

Totally dusted now, hardy veterans of the South-Cross, with our memories of exceptional people and terrain still delight fully clear, we headed back almost at once to the artificial gorges and hurried traffic of Taipei.