Taipei Taroko, Taroko Taipei

Wednesday afternoon I met Ed and Tini at the Taipei main station. We had booked our tickets to Hualien separately and were hoping to sit together. We brought our tickets to the counter and asked to exchange them, but were told they were unable to accomdate us. The train was sold out. Walking to the platform I asked Ed what car he was sitting in. He said seven. I looked at my ticket: car seven. I asked him what seats. He told me 33 and 35. I had seat 34. We laughed and shook our heads, wondering what the ticket seller would have thought had she looked at our tickets.

The train ran along the coast. On one side we could see the ocean; on the other, green mountains rose up from the track. The skies in Taipei had been grey, and a light rain fell off and on.

In Hualien, the hostel manager met us at the train station. The streets were wet; she told us it had just rained. She dropped us off at the front door of the hostel and checked us in. She told us we were the only guests. I had the six person dorm to myself.

Along one wall of the dorm was a library of books. She told us that the English teachers had all put this together. Each book had a number; people were allowed to borrow books for $20NT each. The money went towards buying more books. She told us there were a number of foreigners living in the city studying Chinese. The majority of them stayed first in her hostel. The library was their idea, and she said it worked great.

After checking into our rooms we went off in search of lunch. The town looked very modern, but empty. As we walked, we discovered the main streets were blocked. We asked a police officer why and he told us to sit and watch. We wandered towards a main square and saw that a Japanese parade was about to advance on the city. We surmised it was a sister city situation where groups from a Japanese town had come to visit; later we wondered if it wasn't a push to increase tourism to Japan.

We watched the parade as crowds of people formed. I told Ed it felt like we were in a Chris Marker film. At one point, representatives from Hualien in whale hats danced by waving cardboard cutouts of whales. At another, women danced with CD's attached to their hands to catch the light. Towards the end of the parade, groups of men pulled a float carrying taiko drummers who hammered out a rhythm into the night.

We ate at a wonton place famous for having had a famous person eat there. There was no menu. Upon entering you just indicate the number of bowls you want. They were good, but nothing special. We left hungry, searching for the main factory that produced the mochi for which the city is famous.

As we walked, we ran again into the parade. The women with CD's walked by, then the drummers. Towards the end there was a float advertising Japanese onsen. Trailing this parade were a group of women dressed alike who seemed to be wandering aimlessly. Following them, further down the road, another parade seemed to follow.

We found the mochi place and sampled their wares before buying three bags to eat later and then decided to visit the night market. En route, Tini found a Vietnamese restaurant. She walked up to the counter peopled and started speaking in Vietnamese. They gave her blank looks. Ed asked if they were Vietnamese. They pointed to the restaurant next door.

The proprietor and cook of the restaurant was a Vietnamese woman who had come to Taiwan 10 years ago. She had married a Taiwanese man, and she said life was hard but she was used to it. Tini explained the practice of Taiwanese men using marriage brokers to find Vietnamese wives to me and said she almost did a story on it once. Tini asked her which soup was better; the woman told us not to get the pho. We ordered another soup, which was delicious.

The next morning it was raining hard. I woke up and looked out into the small concrete courtyard. As the dawn broke, it started to lighten. Ed said that the proprietor of the hotel offered to drive us to the train station to catch a bus to Tienhsiang, a small town nestled in the center of the gorge. We had booked rooms in a hostel there.

At the station we bought tickets for Taroko gorge. A taxi driver looked at our tickets and said we had just booked to the main gates but not all the way to Tienhsiang. I quickly exchanged the tickets. The driver went on to tell Ed that he could take a taxi and stop along the way. Ed remarked that the driver didn't have his patter quite down pat. He should have told us to return the tickets and that he would take us. Ed told him we already had tickets. The bus arrived and the driver melted away.

The bus drove around town picking up passengers and then headed towards the gorge. The driver had a raspy voice and wore black leather gloves and sunglasses. Ed said he looked like a gangster. I noticed he carried himself like Beat Takeshi. Ed said he must be a reformed gangster, doing this job as penance. He turned out to be an incredibly nice guy.

We drove through the gorge along narrow winding roads and through new tunnels. I remembered the road used to always follow the river, but someone later explained to us that the typhoons would create flooding in the area, making some sections of the old road unsafe. There was also an effort to separate the road from a walking path along the river.

We arrived at our hostel just before lunch. We dropped off our bags and ate a quick meal near the bus stop. I had asked the receptionist which restaurant was better and she said they were all of a piece. We hired a driver to take us to the start of the gorge so that we could walk back, sampling some of the trails en route. The day was overcast and mist clung to the mountains. It felt as though we were walking through a Chinese ink painting. A number of the paths and trails were closed and we made it back to town just before nightfall.

The next morning we decided to push on to Lishan. We ate breakfast and then walked to the station to catch the one bus up into the mountains. When it arrived, we found ourselves with the same driver. Every morning he leaves Hualien to drive to Lishan. At 3pm he makes the drive back along the winding roads, which are in various states of disrepair due to landslides.

The bus was packed, but he made room and soon we were off. As he drove he kept in constant communication with other trucks and buses along the road, making jokes, and letting them know where he was. As he passed cars, he'd indicate how many there were and on what km marker he had passed them. At one point we passed a car that had tipped into a gully and he called for someone to come lift them out.

He seemed to know every inch of the road and who lived on it. When a passenger asked to be let off at a particular km marker, he asked if he was going to meet with Ah —. The man didn't know. It was his first trip up to start work on the road. The driver asked if he were meeting a heavyset man, but the passenger didn't know. The driver said he knew and when he pulled up he greeted the heavyset man with his name, and told him to take care of the new recruit.

In Lishan, we checked into a Swiss-style chalet called the Swallow's Castle overlooking the valley. Clouds hung over the high peaks, and we could see the valley from which we had come enshrouded in fog. We had passed through a tunnel to arrive in our current valley, and when we emerged the sun had been shining. The receptionist had studied for nine years in Kyoto, and I asked her to give me recommendations on what to do. She said there was far too much to do in Kyoto to be able to do it in a week. I told her to give me the highlights and she said she'd think about it.

The manager had spent 10 years in Ohio. He came back to help run the family business. Ed asked him about tours of the tea plantations and he said that it was problemmatic. The tea workers felt that he was making money off of letting people tour the plantations even though he wasn't and so there was some animosity towards foreigners visiting them. We asked him about where to eat for lunch and he pointed out the two places he would eat. He told us to avoid the rest.

After lunch we toured a well-kept museum devoted to the cross-island highway and a local minoirty tribe before walking back towards the center of town to buy fruit from the fruit-sellers (Lishan is noted for its mountain-grown apples and pears—they're delicious, sweet and juicy). As the sun began to set we went back to our hotel and had coffee and tea in the lobby.

The next morning we rushed to take the only bus to Puli. The receptionist drove us down to the station in a borrowed car, apologizing for the condition (it was the van they use to carry groceries up to the hotel). We pulled in and found the bus. The receptionist asked around for the price and told us a man with a van was offering to take us anywhere in Puli for 400NT each (apparently around the same as the bus ticket). He was delivering some packages to Taichung and was passing through anyway. He told us he'd stop along the way too if we wanted. We agreed and climbed into his van.

We drove back up the road towards Taiyuling and then turned right. (The day before we had stopped there for lunch and Tini found another Vietnamese woman who had come to Taiwan by marriage). We drove on and up and at Hohuanshan were awarded glimpses of an amazing landscape, with clouds rushing down over the shoulders of mountains. A group of motorcyclists were parked at the pass as well; they were dressed as if to race.

Coming down off the pass we emerged out of the fog and had clear views of our surroundings. It was one of the most beautiful sights I had seen in Taiwan and we stopped at another viewpoint a few hundred meters down from the pass to admire the view.

As we descended, the air became more and more warm and tropical. When we arrived in Puli, we asked the driver to drop us off at the Chungtai temple, a modern Buddhist temple built just outside of town.

When we arrived, Ed likened it to what an intergalactic headquarters would look like in a B science fiction movie. He wasn't far off. Designed by the same architect who did Taipei 101, it looked reminiscent of that tower, if one had chopped off the top and added wings to it. We asked for an English tour guide, but none were available, and so our visit was limited to a few chambers. Ed found a nun who had known a friend of his who had taught English there. Ed decided he would return on another date after reserving a guide. Tini said it would be great if he could come with his friend.

We ate lunch at a delicious vegetarian restaurant just outside the front gate and then took a taxi back into town. We parted at the bus station; Ed and Tini were bound for Sun Moon Lake, and I was heading back to Taipei. I had plans with my relatives in the morning. I took a bus to Taichung and caught the high speed rail. All in all, it had been an exhausting day of travel.
Posted by eku at November 25, 2007 8:07 PM