Putting your bike on a train is often (but not always) straightforward

Some days ago I cycled from my home on the outskirts of Tainan to Chaozhou in Pingtung County (屏東縣潮州鎮). To avoid traffic, I took back roads wherever possible, yet managed to travel in a more or less straight line – except for the middle fifth, where having no option other than Highway 22 (which passes near Foguangshan) if I were to cross the Gaoping River – I was compelled to travel east rather than southeast.

According to Strava, I covered the 78.6km in just under four and a quarter hours. Not Tour de France pace, I know, but I'm proud of what I achieved, and I look forward to a few more long rides before the weather gets too hot. The elevation gain during the ride was 262m. Almost all of that, I'm sure, was accounted for a climb just north of Agongdian Reservoir, and another on Highway 22 where it goes below Freeway 10.

This isn't a route I'd claim to be especially scenic, although I did pass through some very pleasant villages once across the Gaoping River. It's just one which worked out well for me on the day. More useful for visitors to Taiwan is knowing that it's now pretty easy to take your bike on certain trains, and that some commuter trains have carriages which have been adapted for cyclists (see first and second images). However, this isn't possible at all stations. For instance, as I was reaching the end of my ride, I knew my options were limited because I could take my bike aboard at Pingtung (屏東), Xishi (西勢) or Chaozhou, but not Guilai (歸來), Linluo (麟洛) or Zhutian (竹田).

I got to Chaozhou about half an hour before the train to Tainan was scheduled to leave, and the young lady who sold me my tickets (full price for me, half-price for the bicycle – see third image) said it was imperative to be on the platform ten minutes before departure. Do bear that in mind.

And the cost? As with every form of public transport in Taiwan save forthe bullet train, impressively cheap: NTD182 for me and the bicycle, one way. That's USD5.89 or GBP4.74. 

Taiwan for Muslim travellers

On a trip to Kaohsiung a few days before the Meinong Earthquake shook southern Taiwan, I noticed a Muslim Prayer Room near the back entrance to Kaohsiung TRA Station. This facility is part of the government's efforts to attract tourists from Muslim countries. Another important aspect of the campaign is encouraging restaurants at major tourist attractions to obtain halal certifications. Unlike the prayer room recently established at Taipei Main Railway Station, the prayer room in Kaohsiung TRA Station is very near washrooms where Muslims can carry out their traditional pre-prayer ablutions.

Very few Taiwanese follow Islam (no more than 0.3% of the population) but the progress Taiwan has made in transforming itself into a Muslim-friendly destination has got some recognition in target markets, such as Malaysia. Still, having been to Sun Moon Lake, Alishan and Taroko Gorge in recent weeks, it seems many of the Muslim visitors to these places aren't tourists from afar, but citizens of Indonesia and other countries already working or studying in Taiwan.

Information for Muslim travelers heading to Taiwan can be found here.

The skyline of Kaohsiung

These images show two of Kaohsiung's landmark buildings: In the foreground, Kaohsiung Exhibition Centre; behind it, the prong-shaped 85 Sky Tower. The former is a convention and trade-show venue which was inaugurated in April 2014. The latter was finished in 1997 and was for several years the tallest structure in Taiwan, until the completion of Taipei 101. Inside this 378m-high there's a swanky hotel, a great deal of unused office space, and some illegal homestays. One of the architects who designed it was C.Y. Lee, who later won great fame for Taipei 101. Kaohsiung's new light-rail system, which is due to commence regular services later this year, will offer very convenient transport to the exhibition centre. 

The disappearance of Taiwan's tobacco farms

Just as the demise of Taiwan’s salt industry doesn’t mean people have stopped adding salt to their food, and the dwindling of the sugar industry doesn’t indicate people are eating less candy, the near-collapse of tobacco growing in Taiwan isn’t the result of people quitting smoking. Fewer young men appear to be lighting up than before, but young women are fast picking up the slack.

Since Taiwan joined the WTO in 2002, the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp. (TTL) - a state-run enterprise and still the island’s dominant maker of cigarettes - has been buying much less tobacco from local farmers, and far more from cheaper overseas suppliers. The price of Taiwan-grown Virginia tobacco has slumped to the point where few farmers see any point in cultivating this once-lucrative cash crop.

Meinong (美濃), now part of Kaohsiung City, is the place in Taiwan most closely associated with tobacco, and the best place to go see what remains of the industry. Now that fields of tall green tobacco plants are hard to find, the most obvious sign of tobacco’s role in the local economy of yore are the town’s distinctive but redundant curing sheds. 

These small, sloping-roof buildings [pictured right] seldom cover more than 40m2 of land, and are made of various materials. Each shed has two floors. On top, there’s always a ventilation tower, which looks like the kind of place where you might lock up a mad aunt.

If you’re driving in from Qishan (旗山), before you reach downtown Meinong, turn right down Fuan Street (福安街). Several tobacco sheds, and also some of the best-preserved traditional courtyard homes, can be found in this community. The shed at no. 24 may not be as attractive as other tobacco buildings in Meinong but it is, almost certainly, the oldest surviving tobacco building in the area. It dates from 1938, the year in which Meinong’s farmers began cultivating tobacco.

Before 1938, Meinong’s principal crops were sugarcane, bananas, and black beans. Meinong wasn’t the first place in Taiwan to grow tobacco, and after 1938 it wasn’t the only place where Virginia leaf was cultivated. In Chiayi, Taichung, Miaoli, Yilan and Hualien, significant amounts of land were given over to tobacco [a field of which is pictured here]. 

Meinong’s first curing sheds were constructed according to Japanese designs; in architectural terms, they are regarded as “Osaka-style.” Some are brick. Others have a concrete first floor, and a second floor made of cheaper materials. The roofs are usually tile, with rusting ironwork atop the ventilation tower. Many are made of wattle-and-daub, the wattle consisting of slats of split bamboo, onto which daub (a mixture of clay, soil, rice straw, chaff, and pig dung) has been slapped. A lot of traditional homes and farm buildings in Taiwan were constructed the same way; it’s a cheap, easy way to build, but if the hard surface of the wall gets cracked, the entire structure deteriorates very rapidly.

To better understand the curing process, do take a look inside one of these sheds. You’ll notice that the central chamber, where the curing took place, has thick walls and a thick metal door. If this door is open, gaze inside and you’ll see that the room goes all the way up to the ventilation tower at the top of the building. Instead of floors or ledges, there are wooden racks on either side. This is where the tobacco would be hung for curing. 

The curing fire would be under the floor of the central chamber, and it would be fed through small portholes like those on the side of a traditional kitchen stove. The shed’s other rooms were used to store firewood. Flue curing consumes a great deal of fuel, and ecologists say this stage of the tobacco-plant-to-cigarette process is disastrous in environmental terms, and has become the No. 1 cause of deforestation in Malawi and other countries.

As soon as tobacco is harvested – in Meinong, the leaves were usually gathered around Lunar New Year – most of the water must be removed from it, hence the need for curing.

There are at least four different ways to cure tobacco. Air curing involves simply hanging the leaves under a shelter that protects them from rain but exposes them to breezes. Sun curing - spreading the leaves out under the sun - is done in a few places. Taiwan’s climate is too humid for either air- or sun-curing to be successful. Fire curing needs little explanation; flue curing, practiced in Taiwan, takes the hot air generated by a fire (but not the smoke or sparks), and circulates it through a tobacco-filled chamber.

With all forms of curing, timing is critical. If done too fast, the leaves end up discoloured, with can affect their flavor. If done too slowly, the leaves rot. Moreover, humidity within the curing chamber must be carefully regulated so as to allow the leaves to dry out slowly. Too-rapid drying would cause them to turn black.

In Meinong, the temperature within the chamber would be permitted rise by five degrees Celsius per day for eight to ten days, until it reached 73 to 80 degrees Celsius. Tobacco farmers used to take turns to watch the fire throughout the days and nights. By the 1990s, however, the process was computer controlled.

During the curing process, the leaves would change colour from green to yellow [see above]. Once cured, the chamber would be opened to fresh breezes, which would slightly re-hydrate the leaves, ensuring they were not too brittle to be turned into cigarettes. 

If you read Chinese, you’ll probably notice glued to the metal door some old curing licenses issued by the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau (the central government agency that later morphed into the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp.) These were issued annually [shown left]. 

According to a 2004 survey, Meinong used to have 1,814 tobacco barns. By the time of the survey, 402 had been demolished or destroyed by fire; 991 had been converted (often into garages or storerooms), and 421 remained intact.

As well as being the only legal retailer of cigarettes on the island, the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau enjoyed monopsony power - it was the only legal purchaser of tobacco on the island, and could therefore determine prices. However, Meinong’s farmers weren’t ruthlessly exploited; during the industry’s heyday, a tobacco grower typically earned two to three times more than a civil servant. Not surprisingly, the area devoted to the crop expanded from 234 hectares in 1946 to 1,342 hectares in 1957, and around 2,300 hectares by the late 1960s. As recently as the 1970s, one in four Meinong families grew tobacco on their land.

Part of Highway 21 becomes Highway 29

At the end of last year, the southern section of Highway 21, from Namasia to Linyuan (both in Kaohsiung City), was redesignated Highway 29. According to Chinese-language media reports, this signals the central government's abandoning of any hopes to connect the northern segment of Highway 21 (which runs from near Puli in Nantou County to Tataka in Yushan National Park via Sun Moon Lake) with the southern part of the road. 

Environmentalists are applauding the move, as it will better protect ecologically-rich uplands. Highway 29 is 112km long; the southern end meets Highway 17, on which it's a short hop into Pingtung County's Donggang Township. Towns along the way include Jiaxian and Qishan. South of the latter, it passes right by Foguangshan and the Buddha Memorial Centre. Also accessed by the highway is San-He Tile Kiln, where I took these photos a few years ago. 

At the time of writing, the road was still labelled as Highway 21 on Google Maps.

Kaohsiung's National Stadium

Last month I attended a meeting at Kaohsiung's National Stadium (國家體育場), a landmark building completed just ahead of the 2009 World Games. The stadium hosted the Games' opening and closing ceremonies. It's in the northwestern part of the city, next to the ROC Naval Academy, and can be seen on the seaward side of the KMRT Red Line if you're travelling between Zuoying (Kaohsiung's high-speed railway station) and Ciaotou. Since the World Games, the stadium has been Taiwan's no. 1 soccer venue, and often hosts pop concerts.

There are several small bodies of water around the 40,000-seat stadium, plus an artificial creek. These were added for aethetic as well as environmental reasons, and work well. I was amazed at the number of fish (including some at least 20cm long), and less surprised to see egrets taking advantage of this food source.

Ahead of the meeting, I had time to walk the whole way around the stadium, which stands on a 19-hectare plot of land and cost a reported US$170 million. The architect, Japan's Toyo Ito (伊東豊雄), was awarded the 2013 Pritzker Prize, and I wouldn't be surprised if this stadium was a major factor in his winning.

Various tree species have been planted, including betel nut (shown in the third image). It's well known that the cultivation of betel nut on hillsides leads to erosion; the palm has very shallow roots, and because the leaves provide so little shade, topsoil dries out quickly. But on flat land they're OK, I suppose.

As with other recent infrastructure projects in Taiwan, public art (fourth and fifth photos) adds colour to the surroundings. What isn't obvious from street level is that much of the roof is covered with electricity-generating solar panels which produce about 80% of the power used by the stadium each year. However, because many of the events are held at night, but the panels produce electricity during the day, the stadium's management are able to sell surplus power to the national grid almost every day.

Rather than having a conventional circle or oval shape, when seen from the sky the stadium looks a little like a question mark which has lost its dot. The photo below comes from a Kaohsiung City Government webpage.

Direct buses from Tainan to Foguangshan

Since the beginning of this month there's a direct bus between Tainan and Foguangshan, which is good news for tourists into cultural attractions who'd rather skip downtown Kaohsiung. The bus is #8050, and - assuming traffic isn't unusually heavy - takes 1 hour 40 minutes one way (adult fare NTD207). It replaces the old #9122 service.

There are only six services per day. These leave Tainan TRA Station at 06.25, 09.10, 10.10, 14.10, 17.10 and 18.50. The route is quite scenic as it follows Road 182 through Neimen (venue of the Songjiang Battle Array), then Highway 3 into Qishan (where you can board a bus to Meinong). There's no need to change buses in Qishan; stay onboard for the few minutes it spends at Qishan's bus station. The final part of the journey, from Qishan to the monastery, takes less than 15 minutes. In the opposite direction, the first bus setting out from Foguangshan is at 06.15, the last at 16.45.

Egrets on the coast

Egrets cluster on a fishing vessel at Kezailiao Harbour (蚵仔寮漁港), Kaohsiung. The port here is pretty small but attracts a lot of visitors on weekends. Some buy superfresh seafood which they take home and cook, others enjoy meals or snacks at the adjacent eateries. For some more photos and details how to get to Kezailiao by public transport, see this blogger's writeup on the place.

Taiwan's best cycling roads

Michael Turton, an extremely knowledgeable American who's lived in Taiwan for more than 20 years, has written this very useful introduction to ten of the best cycling routes on the main island. I've been on nine of these roads (and may have been on the tenth - I'm not sure, it would have been about five years ago) and recommend all of them, even if you plan to drive or ride a motorcycle rather than pedal your way around Taiwan.

To mention just three of the ten... Highway 8, which links Hualien with Lishan via Taroko Gorge, involves a huge amount of climbing. Road 193 follows the boundary between the southern plains of Pingtung County and the rugged uplands near Maolin and Sandimen; there are some historical sights, too, such as Wanjin Basilica. Road 159A is an excellent approach to the Alishan area; exploring it one time by motorcycle, I went up a side road which was very promising until I reached the rockslide pictured above.

The wonderful thing about cycling, of course, is it's so easy to stop anywhere you find something of interest - whether it's piles of discarded oyster shells, like these I came across in Dongshi, Chiayi County - a temple or even an abandoned haunted mansion.

A library, not a temple

This library in Kaohsiung City's Fengshan District (高雄市鳳山區) is a typical piece of Northern-Palace architecture, the building style favoured by the Kuomintang regime between the 1950s and 1970s. Other examples are the National Palace Museum in Taipei, the National Revolutionary Martyrs Shine and also quite a few post-war Roman Catholic churches. 

Photos and panoramas of Kaohsiung

This Kaohsiung City Government website has an engaging collection of photos and panoramas of attractions in the municipality, including aerial shots of Mount Banping, the very modern Da Dong Arts Center in Fengshan District and an oil-paper umbrella store in Meinong.

Just a few days ago, I was at this spot in Maolin, enjoying very similar views of the surrounding mountains and the post-Typhoon Morakot bridge.

The Fire Lion... and Falun Gong

A few weeks back we attended the final day of the 2012 Kaohsiung Zuoying Wannian Folklore Festival (高雄左營萬年季). When the article I wrote about this cultural event appears next year, I'll add a link. Until then, here's a summary: Several local temples cooperate to build a "fire lion" which is venerated, paraded through the streets of Zuoying, blasted with firecrackers (shown top) and then set afire to carry people's wishes and hopes up to heaven. Dozens of other events - culinary and artistic - have been tacked on to create the modern festival.

One of the wonderful things about religious events in Taiwan is that you never know what you might see. Over the past 20 years, I've been to or stumbled across hundreds of miao hui (廟會, 'temple gatherings') and da bai bai (大拜拜, 'big worship ceremonies') but I don't recall ever seen members of Falun Gong - a group regarded by some as a cult - taking part in one. There were almost 200 of them, outnumbering the lion dancers and other zhentou. The banner bearers (above) were quite striking, but it was the marching band (below) that I'll remember. Watching them, I couldn't but help thinking of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

  

Points of the compass

A sidewalk decoration with the four points of the compass marked in Chinese in Kaohsiung City's Fengshan District (高雄市鳳山區). They are, going clockwise from top right, 南 (nán, south), 西 (xī, west), 北 (běi, north) and 東 (dōng, east).

Taiwan's lighthouses

Taiwan has around 1,600km of coast and well over 100 minor islands. In the 19th century, shipwrecks were frequent and they sometimes led to international incidents, so it's no surprise the government operates 34 lighthouses to ensure maritime safety. For the past 140 years, these lighthouses have been managed by the Directorate General of Customs, a body founded back in the Qing Dynasty and headed for 48 years by Sir Robert Hart, an Ulsterman. 

At the end of this year, however, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications will take over responsibilities for lighthouses, and to celebrate the handover, 12 lighthouses will be open to the public on June 30. The 12 were built between 1872 and 1983, and six are opening their doors to the public for the very first time. Several other lighthouses are open to the public year round, among them the one that stands on Qijin Island and overlooks the mouth of Kaohsiung Port. Judging by this photo, Suao Lighthouse has a spectacular location, but it isn't open to casual visitors. 

I visited the lighthouse pictured here (Creative Commons photo by Shih-Pei Chang) while researching the Penghu County section of my guidebook; the grounds are open to visitors, but the building is off-limits. Or so it seems.

Xiaolin Pingpu Culture Museum

A few days ago, we visited the recently opened Xiaolin Pingpu Culture Museum (小林平埔族群文物館). It's a replacement for a small museum maintained inside Xiaolin Elementary School until landslides triggered by 2009's Typhoon Morakot obliterated the school and almost the entire village of Xiaolin. The original museum was the first devoted to Taiwan's lowland aborigines, Xiaolin being an outpost of the Siraya people. This ethnic group isn't recognized by Taiwan's government, but thanks to Xiaolin's remote location, tribe members there were able to preserve much of the culture.

The new two-floor museum (main hall pictured above) displays a great many traditional tools and implements, most of which are made of bamboo. There's almost no English. Those who can't read Chinese will be able to recognize the tiny banjos and equipment used for making mud bricks (pictured left), but they're unlikely to know which of the other items is in fact a mousetrap, and which was used for carrying water.

One display notes that in 1945, just before the end of Japanese colonial rule, 91 lowland aboriginal families were living here; 34 of them were headed by men surnamed Pan (潘), 30 by men surnamed Liu (劉) and seven by men called Xu (徐). Domination of a village by one or two surnames isn't unique to lowland aboriginal villages; it's also common in Han Chinese areas. There are also many poignant photos of old Xiaolin (such as the one on the right). You can't help but wonder how many of the people pictured are still alive.

The museum's address is 50 Wuli Road, Jiasian District, Kaohsiung City (甲仙區五里路50號), but an easy way to find it is to follow Highway 21 northwards from Jiaxian, and look for kilometer marker 223. The museum, plus several homes built to house survivors of Typhoon Morakot, are beside the road, on the right-hand side. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to midday and 1pm to 5pm.

Pandas in temples

Inside Taiwan's temples, you're likely to find carved, etched or painted depictions of various animals, especially dragons, lions and elephants, but also owls, pangolins, fish, crabs and other crustaceans.

Returning to Shunsian Temple (順賢宮) for the first time in almost three years, I noticed something I'd missed on previous visits: Etchings of pandas in a mountainous landscape. As I've never before noticed pandas inside temples, I'm wondering if their presence here reflects the temple's newness. The shrine was inaugurated in 2008 - the year panda-fever broke out in Taiwan when China presented a pair of pandas to Taipei Zoo.

Tianliao's mud volcano

Mud volcanoes enthrall me, so a little while back I rode my motorcycle out to Kaohsiung City's Tianliao District (高雄市田寮區) in search of a mud volcano marked on some maps of the area. En route, I passed through some of south Taiwan's most striking "moonworld" scenery; I took the photo above near where Freeway 3 goes under Zhongliaoshan (中寮山 ), a 421m-high peak topped by military and civilian telecommunications equipment.

The volcano itself is difficult to find if don't read any Chinese. From Tianliao itself, head east on Highway 28, over Freeway 3 to the community of Chongde (崇德). Then take Kaohsiung Road 141 on the right. After less than 1km, you'll see Chongde Elementary School (崇德國小). The mud volcano is a further 1.5km east; keep your eyes peeled for Chinese-language signs reading 泥火山. Opposite a chicken farm, you'll find some rough concrete steps going up into a bamboo forest on the right-hand side of the road. The volcano is less than 100m away.

In visual terms, Chongde's volcano is less exciting than the better-known eruption at Wushanding (烏山頂) about 9km to the south. There's no cone as such, rather a 1m-wide belching hole in the ground. I picked up a bamboo almost as long as I am tall and stirred the hole. This seemed to cause an outbreak of bubbling; the stick wasn't long enough to probe the bottom of the vent, pictured below.

Temple reconstruction

Many temples in Taiwan have a long history, but in relatively few instances is the structure itself more than a century old. Depending on how wealthy a temple is, the building may be torn down and rebuilt from scratch - or at least refurbished beyond recognition - every two or three generations. An Australian who worked on Dalongdong Baoan Temple (one of Taipei's finest) said this:

In Western culture we are absolutely fixated on the preservation of the object, but in Chinese culture it is the concept that is all important – the object is merely an expression of the concept. Thus the replacement of elements in an artefact is carried out as a matter of course. 'Old' temples have been rebuilt many times... Generally there is little effort to replicate the original, though the design and layout is predetermined by custom. Renovation is seen as an opportunity for improvement – to use richer materials and to use craftsman of even greater skill than previously.

I came across the semi-renovated shrine pictured above during a recent trip into Kaohsiung's backcountry. Clearly, the first stage of the process had been to strip the building of everything but the basic concrete-and-rebar. Private homes are often renovated in the same manner.

Buddha Washing Day

Last week I drove to Foguangshan to see the new Buddha Memorial Center, which opens to the public on December 25. It also happened to be the one day each year when the 14,800 Buddha icons in the Main Shrine are removed, cleaned by volunteers (above) and then put back in their sconces (below).

Back to Little Liuqiu

A couple of weeks ago, I returned to Little Liuqiu, this time with my wife and son in tow, for 24 hours of ecotourism on behalf of Travel in Taiwan magazine. While driving around the southeastern corner of the island, we approached what most maps call 'Indian Rock', because it resembles a North American native wearing a traditional headdress. Our guide, a knowledgeable young man working for Dapeng Bay Scenic Area Administration, pointed out that many visitors feel it more closely resembles Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu.

The highlight of the visit was a nighttime tour of the intertidal zone at Yufu Fishing Harbor (魚福魚港). The foreshore there is rocky and uneven, so there are countless pools and trenches where sea creatures hide out between tides.

The guide sensibly began by warning us not to touch anything until he gave the OK; some denizens of the intertidal zone – such as rock boring urchins – can inflict nasty stings. We waded what seemed a considerable distance from dry land, but never getting more than our ankles wet, and saw black brittle starfish, sea cucumbers, and metre-long black-and-white worms no thicker than a strand of spaghetti. More remarkable were the sea hares, soft gastropods that emit purple ink when under attack. This substance intoxicates and disorients fish; our guide said that when he was child, he and his friends would use it to help them catch fish.

Like any good entertainer the guide had a finale. Asking us to dim our flashlights, he began brushing the water with his hand. Within seconds spots of greenish lights appeared in the water. Bioluminescent plankton, the underwater equivalent of fireflies!