Taiwan

You Have Won a Trip to Taiwan!  

Taiwan is where Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist followers holed up in 1949 after fleeing Mao Zedong, its sovereignty still a matter of active contention. It is a major player in the high-tech world.

By: Jayne Wise*
Marilyn Terrell **

I entered a drawing, and won a trip for two to Taiwan.
Its capital, Taipei, population 2.7 million, claims the world’s tallest building. It rests on shifting tectonic plates, so is periodically rocked by earthquakes.
Who better as travel mate than my colleague Marilyn?

Taipei: Sky-High and Climbing

Marilyn: As we make the 13-hour flight from Los Angeles, I realize I am eager to spend time in Taipei. I want to ride the MRT – a state-of-the-art subway – and dine at a snake restaurant, where dinner slithers before your eyes. I want to tour the National Palace Museum, a motherlode of Chinese textiles, paintings, ceramics, sculpture and calligraphy that Chiang Kai-shek rescued before the Cultural Revolution could destroy it. I want to try a reflexology foot massage.
And my 11-year-old son would never forgive me if I passed up a chance to ride the world’s fastest elevator, in the tallest building. At the hotel, my 6 a.m. wake-up call comes in Chinese. Su-Fang awaits in the lobby with a big smile.
Locals are gathered outside the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, which holds artifacts related to Dr. Sun’s role as the first provisional president of Taiwan’s Republic of China. Some people practice their tai chi moves. Others exercise with swords, flags or bamboo poles.
Next, we stop by Su-Fang’s apartment for tea with her sister, Marjorie, and friends gathered for a weekly origami class. The dining room table is set with plates of pastries -- and cleverly folded paper frogs, cranes, turtles, dragons, fish and flowers.
A short ride on the MRT subway brings us to the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall, built to honor Chiang Kai-shek. A guide recounts Chiang’s achievements as we view his black Cadillac limos and the 1938 Time magazine cover naming Chiang and his spouse (a political powerhouse in her own right) “Man and Wife of the Year.” We continue into a vast hall housing a larger-than-life statue of Chiang, attended by an honor guard.
Jayne: I meet up with Marilyn and Su-Fang at the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101, 1,667 feet of sky-high entrepreneurial ambitions. Designed to resemble a segmented bamboo shoot, the structure, like bamboo, pairs strength with flexibility -- a good thing considering that it is built on this temblor-prone land. We ride the world’s fastest elevator, which rockets from ground level to the 89th floor in 37 seconds. We barely feel the speed.

Taroko Gorge

Jayne: We’re on the road to Taiwan’s most famous national park, Taroko, a few hours’ drive south of Taipei and centered on the serpenting, steeply chiseled Taroko Gorge. A work still very much in geological progress, this landscape formed when tectonic plates underlying Taiwan ground against each other, forcing up layers of rock to create Taiwan’s Central Mountains, which are sliced by the Liwu River into dramatic gorges.
Marilyn: It feels like we’re entering an intricate Chinese landscape painting, a vertical land layered with trees and rock. At the park visitors area, our guide, Weiling Liu, has ordered us lunch.
The park road is an engineering marvel involving 38 tunnels and a procession of bridges. “There was not a lot of heavy machinery available at the time,” he says, “so much of the road had to be hand-built.”
Jayne: We are en route to the Shakadang Trail. The path unspools along a side gorge by the Bridge of a Hundred Lions, its railings decorated with little lion statues.
“Shakadang is an aboriginal word for molar tooth,” Weiling tells us. “It refers to the boulders that clutter the stream.” Soon we spot them, milky white, many the size of small elephants. And the stream! A blend of blue mountain water and chalky leaching from the rocks, it is a deep aquamarine.
Every turn of the path presents a new scenic: cliff walls glistening with spring water spilling through fissures, explosions of taro leaves the size of umbrellas.

Bunun Village

Jayne: We drive up into the East Rift Valley, winding around hairpin turns and past terraced rice fields on our way to Bunun Village. Over the past decade, this aboriginal mountain settlement has transformed itself into a community fostering sustainable tourism.
Bunun tribe members descend from some of Taiwan’s original inhabitants, who found their way to the island more than 5,000 years ago, many from the Malay archipelago. The Bunun are one of the 13 original tribes now recognized by the government.
Totem-like statues greet us at the gate to the modest village of low buildings, where we find Bunun members weaving textiles and carving wood chairs shaped as human figures, a Bunun hallmark.
We hurry to get seats in a small outdoor theater. Children in tribal dress, all reds and blues and blacks, take the stage. As drums beat out what sounds like a Polynesian rhythm, the children start chanting in eight-part harmony.
Like many aboriginal peoples, Taiwan’s tribes – which account for 2 percent of the population -- were long an under-valued minority. That is changing. In 1999, Taiwan hosted the International Conference on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and today the tribes have a voice in politics through a special council.

Kenting Surf City Roc

Jayne: In four hours we’ve traveled from aboriginal Bunun Village to surf central -- the funky resort town of Kenting. We pull up to the Hotel California, which looks like a youth hostel, on Kenting’s main street. The hotel has a certain boho-beach charm, the lobby a playful combination of surf shop and Internet cafe.
Marilyn: Kenting has a boardwalk, and its main street becomes a pedestrian zone during the festive nightly market. Scores of vendors sell roasted duck heads, chicken feet, tiny seashells with the animals cooked inside (you suck them out), as well as clothing, souvenirs and more. Soft vanilla ice cream swirled with green tea flavor seems to be a crowd favorite.
Jayne: A big reason visitors come here is to visit Kenting National Park, Taiwan’s first, a patchwork of coralline coastal areas, caves and rock outcrops. At the park’s visitors center, we watch a slide show on the regional geology -- which includes unusual slumping cliffs and sand rivers -- and the wildlife, headlined by a startlingly varied bird population, 310 avian species, that shares crowded air space with some 216 kinds of butterflies.
We then make our way to Eluanbi Park, where trails lead us between walls of ancient coral rock embedded with seashells. This former seabed, pushed up by some tectonic action or other, reminds me that we are on an island that averages some 20,000 temblors a year. Little did I guess that we were about to experience one ourselves.

Alishan Land of the Giants

Marilyn: I’m writing from the slopes of Alishan, one of the highest mountain ranges in Taiwan and the centerpiece of the Alishan National Scenic Area. We arrived after a long drive through rolling hills terraced with tea fields, where women wearing bamboo hats as sun shade picked leaves along rows of tea plants. The oolong tea grown in this cool, moist mountain climate is considered Taiwan’s finest.
We are staying at the Alishan House hotel, a rambling lodge with luxurious rooms and striking views of mountain peaks. In the middle of the night, I awoke to an odd feeling. Turning on the light, I saw my bed move. Earthquake? I put on my robe and shoes to flee, but then the shaking stopped.
I’m up early to catch the sunrise tour, a popular tradition. Typically, a sea of clouds fills the valley below, a sight that brings busloads of visitors to the mountaintop at 4 a.m. to jockey for the best spot. In the distance, row after row of craggy mountain ridges appear in the predawn blue.
During my post-sunrise breakfast, I ask another hotel guest if he felt anything the night before. “Yes, a shaking, around midnight.” I’d experienced my first earthquake.
Jayne: I sleep through Marilyn’s ground shaker but am wide awake for what, to me, will be a highlight of the trip: exploring Alishan’s trails. Not only will we do some vigorous hiking. We’ll also ride one of the world’s highest mountain railways -- and meet some of Earth’s oldest inhabitants: Taiwan’s giant Formosan (or red) cypresses, venerable trees that have withstood centuries, and in some cases millennia, of typhoons, earthquakes, landslides and logging.
We set off along the Alishan Trail from the park visitors center below the hotel. The cedars and pines around us are tall. But they’re mere preamble to what awaits on the Sacred Tree Trail, which loops past the 36 Formosan cypresses that still stand.
The first giant we glimpse: an 83-foot-high eminence, its thick, weathered trunk rising five stories before sending out leafy branches. At 1,500 years old, it’s a relative youngster. The oldest tree here, stands 148 feet high, and sports a girth of 40 feet.
The trail brings us to the tracks of the mountain railroad, built by the Japanese to haul timber during their rule of Taiwan. We board the train, considered one of the great mountain railways for its unique spiraling track and four double switchbacks, and clatter down the mountain, gasping now and then as the track snakes along steep slopes and eases across plummeting river gorges on spindly bridges. Pine trees grow from impossibly angled footholds.

Sun Moon Lake

Marilyn: We are at Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan’s beloved “honeymoon heaven.” We opt for the quirky Full House, a mixed metaphor of a B&B owned by a Taiwanese artist and her husband. Part wood chalet, part art space, it is decorated with a playful mix of Taiwanese crafts, Euro contemporary works, African art, paintings by our hostess, stacks of art books, and towers of fragrant grapefruits.
Jayne: The minute we step into the B&B’s lovingly tended garden, however, with its flowering trees and trickling fountains, embellished with ceramic animals and artfully placed driftwood, we enter a realm unto itself.
We dine that evening by candlelight under the garden’s tented pergola. Owner Yi-Jen Lin serves us an inventive feast of savory pumpkin with honeydew melon, mango dressed with shiitake oil, sauteed fish and mushrooms drizzled in oyster oil.
“We prepare fruits to reflect the four seasons,” Yi-Jen says.
“We’ve seen a lot but also missed a lot,” I muse as Marilyn tucks into the fish. “We didn’t get to the north coast and its fishing villages. Or the bamboo forest in Hsitou. Or the gold-mining park in Jinguashi. Or Gangshan and its bamboo craftspeople.”
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Marilyn says.
“Absolutely. We need to come back. But let’s not wait to win another free trip before doing so.”

Nuts and Bolts

When should I visit Taiwan? Perhaps the best times are March through May and mid-September through mid-November, when weather conditions are generally cool and dry. June through August tends to be steamy and subject to typhoons. Chinese New Year celebrations in January and February are popular vacation events for locals, driving up rates, crowding roads, and closing many businesses.
Should I explore on my own or take a group tour? Group travel, popular among locals, is an easy way for first-time visitors to reach Taiwan’s top attractions. A number of outfitters offer package tours around Taiwan; for a list of packages and providers, log on to www.go2 taiwan.net/tour--package.php. A somewhat pricier tour option is to hire a car and driver, which allows for an individualized itinerary and last-minute alterations.
Traveling on your own is a more adventurous option:
The island’s network of trains and public buses links major sites. The Taiwanese are known for their hospitality and eagerness to help foreign visitors.

* Jayne Wise is a Traveler senior editor
** Marilyn Terrell is the magazine’s chief researcher. Contributing editor Justin Guariglia is an Asia aficionado.