Taiwan Today

Travel agencies offer bargain rates to persuade visitors to see more of the 'island beautiful'

Taiwan tourism has tended to be Taipei-oriented. This is true for several reasons. The island is not so small as to be seen in a day or two but average tourists schedule a stay of only three or four days. Until recently, only a few hotels outside Taipei had been of international standard. Down-island attractions have not been widely publicized. Many travelers are unaware that some of Taiwan's best tourism lies to the south.

Fourteen travel agencies now have banded together to offer a bargain package that should shake more tourists out of Taiwan's largest city and all around the "island beautiful". The heart of the Taiwan Visitors' Association program will be an "Around Taiwan in Seven Day Tour" for US$125. This includes transportation, some meals and lodging. For those with less than a week to spare, five days will cost US$101, four days US$75, three days US$48.25, two days US$30 and one day US$25. TVA has opened a Taipei information center to help travelers plan their excursions.

Arrival day and the second day will be devoted to Taipei. Sightseeing will be conducted in and around the city. Visitors may spend half a day or longer at the National Palace Museum, which houses nearly a quarter of a million masterpieces of Chinese art. Connoisseurs often give several days to the 3,000-odd items that the museum displays at one time. The collection is rich in porcelains, paintings, bronzes, jades and calligraphy. English-speaking guides are available. Free guided tours are offered with commentary in English.

Taipei has historical and natural history museums, too. The wide selection of Chinese provincial cooking specialties is the largest and generally conceded to be the best in the world. Chinese opera schedules are irregular but one or another of the island's many troupes usually is performing some place in the city. Also of interest are nearby beaches, one of the Far East's finest golf courses and a varied nightlife. The theater-restaurants are more reasonably priced than those of Japan and offer Cantonese style Chinese food.

A mountain park - Yangmingshan - is only half an hour's drive out of town. Aborigine singing and dancing are on stage at Wulai, where the island's only aerial tramway is now in operation. Taipei has plenty to keep the tourist occupied for several days. When sightseeing palls, the handicraft shops near any hotel are worth a visit. The line of handmade items is large and the prices low.

On the morning of the third day, the package visitor will fly China Airlines to Hualien on the unspoiled, lightly settled East Coast. The trip takes only 45 minutes and affords a vista of the Central Mountain Range and the island's precipitous plunge into the blue waters of the Pacific. There are three points of interest in the Hualien area:

-Marble quarrying. Exploitation has been markedly stepped up in recent years. Retired servicemen have led the way in opening up quarries and processing the varicolored marble into slabs for building construction and a wide variety of handicraft items. The tour includes a visit to a quarry.

-Aborigine performances of song and dance. Hualien county is the heart of aborigine country and the natives of the Ami are widely reputed to be the best entertainers of the Taiwan tribesmen. The Hualien show is commercialized, as it has to be, but most tourists find it more interesting than the performance at Wulai. Tourist participation and picture taking are expected.

-Taroko Gorge. Among easily accessible Taiwan tourist attractions, this is the most popular. The gorge leading into the high mountains begins where a mountain stream reaches the sea just north of Hualien. The river has eroded away a canyon with walls that rise sheerly for thousands of feet. Marble predominates in the geological strata. Much of the road has been blasted through this beautiful rock. There are brooks and waterfalls, suspension bridges and tunnels without number. The trip across the East-West Cross-Island Highway is not included in the seven-day package but can be substituted if visitors want to see more of mountains that are Northeast Asia's highest.

CAL flies the tour group from Hualien to Kaohsiung the morning of the fourth day. A stop is made at Taitung, the southernmost city on the East Coast and a center of pineapple growing and canning. This is aborigine country, too, and the home of C.K. Yang, the Chinese athlete who set a world record in the decathlon. Both Hualien and Taitung are more tropical and humid than Taipei. From Taitung, the plane flies southward briefly, and then over the descending peaks. The Central Range tends to run out as it reaches the toe of the island.

Kaohsiung, 200 miles southwest of Taipei, is the largest port and second largest city. Its industries are booming. Some visitors may want to see the Export Processing Center, which has some 60 industries already in operation and twice that many scheduled for construction. The whole of Kaohsiung and the port is spectacularly laid out below a hill that is favored by sightseers and local residents out for an evening stroll or a cooling drive. Kaohsiung has the River of Love and Chengching Lake, a reservoir with Chinese pagodas and a complacent serenity.

After a day of sightseeing, the tour group goes to Tainan (less than an hour to the north by bus or train) for an overnight stay. The next morning is devoted to a look around Taiwan's old capital - the seat of the Dutch during their 40-year occupation in the mid-1600s. Two forts are still standing, Providentia in the heart of the thriving city and Zeelandia in the suburbs. It was at Zeelandia, then on the sea, that the Dutch surrendered to Koxinga and embarked for the Dutch East Indies with such property as they could carry. Some of the island's oldest temples also are found in Tainan.

The trip from Tainan to Taichung is made on the Taiwan Railway Administration's comfortable and fast Tourist Express. This is an all-reserved-seat, air-conditioned train that carries a diner and offers such special services as hot or cold towels (depending on the season) and tea service at each seat. Taichung is a pleasant small city and the seat of the Taiwan provincial government is nearby. From here the tour group takes a Highway Bus for the 2½-hour trip to Sun Moon Lake 2,500 feet up in the Central Range. For honeymooners, this is Taiwan's Niagara Falls. The lake is a jewel set among evergreen hills. Hotels and food are good. A hillside temple, aborigine village and handicraft shopping are of interest to those who tire of looking at the quiet loveliness of the lake.

The return to Taichung is made on the sixth day, thence to Taipei via rail (three hours). Departure from Taiwan is scheduled for the seventh day after an overnight stay in Taipei. That makes a sizable US$125 worth.

Those who want the five-day tour can see about the same down-island spots but without so much time allocated for Taipei. There is also a rush-rush four-day version. Three days is sufficient for Taipei, Hualien and Taroko and two days for Sun Moon Lake. For the traveler with only one day to get out of Taipei, the Taroko Gorge roundtrip can be made in some ten hours.

Two other sidetrips can be arranged through TVA at reasonable cost. One is a day's bus trip from Kaohsiung to the southern tip of the island at Oluanpi, the site of a lighthouse and gardens of Taiwan flora. The other is a narrow-gauge railroad trip from Chiayi (between Tainan and Taichung) to Alishan at the 7,500-foot level in the Central Range. This normally requires an overnight stay at a new forestry lodge at the top of the mountain but is well worth the time. The scenery along the way is spectacular, varying from the tropical growth of the Chiayi plain to the temperate and then to the subarctic evergreens of the mountains. Groves of huge bamboo are found in between. The railroad was built for logging half a century ago and is a must for those interested in steam locomotives of ancient vintage. The trip is made in comfortable two-car diesel trains but some of the old fire-eaters are still plying the line and are to be seen braking their heavy loads of cypress and other logs down the mountain. Early-risers can go to a nearby promontory to see the sunrise over Yushan (Mt. Morrison). At 13,000 feet, this peak is Taiwan's highest and tops Japan's Fuji. Alishan also has aborigines, sacred and three-generation trees and natural air-conditioning even in July and August.

Judging from the continued increase in Taiwan tourism, TVA's new package tours are sure to be sellouts. In the January-June period of 1968, nearly 147,000 tourists came to Taiwan for an increase of 27 per cent. Tourism growth has run between 30 and 40 per cent annually for several years, the fastest rate of gain in East Asia. The 1968 figure does not include the more than 20,000 American servicemen who came on rest and relaxation leaves. Americans no longer dominate as they did through the early 1960s. Japanese are now the numerical leaders - 36,900 to 30,691 Americans in the first five months of 1968.

Tourism earnings are expected to rise close to the US$50 million mark for 1968 and Taiwan is looking forward to a million visitors and earnings in excess of US$100 million annually. The Executive Yuan (Cabinet) has approved the establishment of a policy-making committee for tourism under its direct control. Air-conditioning is being installed at Sungshan Airport in Taipei. International flights soon will be stopping at the enlarged Kaohsiung airport. It then will be possible for a tourist to enter the Republic of China at Taipei and exit at Kaohsiung or vice versa. All-island tourism is bound to increase rapidly.

Estimates of the Ministry of Communications suggest that Taiwan's passenger air traffic will soar seven times from 500,000 to 3.5 million annually within the next 15 years. An expansion program will prepare Sungshan Airport for the arrival of the jumbo jets about three years hence. No decision has yet been reached about how to handle the supersonic planes expected in the mid-1970s. A new airport probably will be built in the Taoyuan area about 15 miles west of Taipei. Overocean take-offs would then be possible. American airport construction experts will come to Taiwan this fall to help the government study the problem.

To accommodate the jumbo jets, Sungshan will get an enlarged terminal and the auxiliary runway will be lengthened. Three new aprons will be added, raising the total to nine. Expansion already scheduled will cost US$2½ million. Between 40 and 50 international flights daily are now taking off and landing at Taipei. Expansion plans of CAL call for adding service to Guam and Indonesia.

More tourists are arriving by sea at Kaohsiung and Keelung, the port for Taipei. To serve those embarking and disembarking at Keelung, a five-story passenger terminal will be opened next year. It will have capacity of 1,500 passengers and facilities will include a hotel, restaurant, shops, waiting rooms and money exchange.

Rising tourist volume is redirecting interest to large hotel construction. Taipei has three hostelries of more than 300 rooms and scores of small ones. Many new hotels have been opened in the last two years but none in the 300-room and larger category. At least two hotels of 500 or more rooms are under consideration, one across from the railroad station in the downtown section and the other across the street from the Mandarin Hotel near the airport. Tourist consultants have pointed out that many travelers like big hotels where every facility is available and service is standardized at a high level. International hotel operators are showing interest in Taipei.

Many other contemplated projects are connected with tourism. One of these calls for the development of Hoping Island at Keelung into a recreation area including an aquatic center and resort hotel at a cost of nearly US$5 million. Tourism optimists say that within the next decade, the money spent by sightseers may become the island's biggest single source of foreign exchange, surpassing textiles.

Taiwan's tourist industry seeks a profit but also is trying to grow in keeping with Confucius' observation that greeting friends from afar is one of life's greatest pleasures. Chinese hospitality is the most frequent answer when departing visitors are asked what they liked best about Taiwan.