Around Formosa

Long, long ago, when European sailors cruised the Eastern Pacific in search of new lands to explore, they saw an island rise vaguely in the tranquil blue ocean. Dolphins, and perhaps even big whale, may have greeted them as these sailors sailed closer. Lush mountains, towering majestically ever higher over one another, caught their imaginations. What beauties lie there, what treasures are hidden, they may have wondered. "Ilha Formosa!", the sailors exclaimed in their native Portuguese. "Beautiful Island" the land they had just stumbled across indeed really is.

Fast forward a few hundred years, and a traveler has just made a similarly long and arduous journey to Formosa, back to his roots... back to discover what beauties lie there still waiting to be explored.

After the rather emotional ceremony commemorating 100 days after my dad's death, mum and I decided to take a trip down south. We boarded the Taiwan High Speed Rail, and within 90 minutes found ourselves some a couple of hundreds of kilometres in the south of the island, where the climate is tropical and at times dramatically different from the damp and temperate north. An uncle of mine lives in the port city of Kaohsiung (高雄), traditionally the industry capital of Taiwan. A decade ago people would have thought of the city as a run-down, heavily polluted and industrised, and covered in smog and with a smelly river running through it. But today it is much different. A new metro system just opened, and the city is booming with tall skyscrapers and glitzy shopping malls and department stores. The pace of life is much slower than in Taipei, the streets better organised and less crowded, and the locals are much more friendlier. Where defunct warehouses and paddy fields used to be, today there are new residential areas and big green parks.

We were taken aback by how much has changed. Next to sampling the local delicacies, we toured the sights in and around Kaohsiung with my uncle's family. Like always, my two little cousin were really a joy to be around with. Though I only see them once every year or so, they have really grown, not only in size but also matured much as well. They somehow remind me every time of my brother and I when we were little, and they even look and behave like us! I played with them, went cycling with them at night, and they seemed all too happy to go wherever I went or do whatever I wanted to do, as if I was some kind of idol for them, which takes some getting used to.

Together, we toured an old sugar plantation in Chiaotou (橋頭) , and like all tourist attractions in Taiwan on a weekend, it was full of people, munching or drinking away. Escaping the crowds we walked towards an almost empty part of the plantation, where old Japanese-styled houses have stood for since the beginning of the last century. Most of the houses are rows of dormitories, with broken windows and missing doors and walls as evidence of the neglect and abandon. A shame, I thought to myself, but again a typical phenomenon of a newly industrialised country and society like Taiwan, which seeks to build bigger, newer and taller buildings, but fail to recognise the beauty or cultural significance of the heritage or history of our ancestors. Nowhere else in the world can you find red-brick walls, slanted black-tiled roofs, sliding doors and tatami floors all in the same structure. All these simple elements reflect the many influences Oriental and Occidental that the islanders have undergone throughout the centuries, which combine to make interesting architectural and anthropological study.

A little railway line ran next to these dormitories, and in its glory days used to transport tonnes of sugar cane up and down the country for export. Today sugar no longer enjoys the prices or demand it used to, and in its stead, computer chips and wafers have become Taiwan's main export. Nowadays, only a limited stretch of the line is still in use, and sugar cane has become the few tourists who are willing to bear the smell and racket of a slow chugging diesel engine. The line runs through rice paddies, and unfortunately also rampant graveyards... or "nightclubs", as locals call them, because graveyards are reputed to be more 'alive' at night.

On the isle of Chijin (旗津), just outside of Kaohsiung Port, we enjoyed the afternoon sunset, and watched big cargo ships go by. There we stood, at the mouth of one of the world's busiest ports, and climbed the hills to where once a formidable fortress stood to ward off pirates. Across the water was the red-brick building which housed the former British Consulate to Formosa, which was in use in the days when the big powers still had interest in this island. Even up to the early seventies, American naval ships and marines were stationed at Kaohsiung to defend against the threat across the Taiwan Strait. Today, only cargo ships and fishing vessels come and go, and those days seem long gone. Dipping my feet in the water, that seemed to grow stronger and stronger by the minute, I looked out into the distance, and saw a low haze of mist shroud the horizon. Thinking about it, my feet have touched so many different waters in the last few weeks, and it still seemed surreal that I was actually there, with my mum and relatives once again.

The village of Meinung (美濃) has preserved much of the culture and traditions of the Hakka people, which are one of the four peoples of Taiwan (the others being Taiwanese, Chinese and 12 different Aboriginal peoples). The Hakka are wellknown for their attitude of hardwork and togetherness, and since their immigration to the island have grouped together to form successful agricultural communes that dot the island which produce abundant and high-quality crops and rice. Most famous for their paper-umbrellas and signature blue dresses for women, in the village we could also see lots of toys made of bamboo and broken tin cans and jugs that bring back nostalgic memories of a Taiwan before concrete and glass buildings, before the age of 7-Eleven and Starbucks.

In the surrounding villages were beautiful mountains that stretch for hundreds of kilometers eastwards and northward to form the Central Mountain Range. In the light rain, we traveled into the mountains a bit, snaking through narrow roads that followed a dried riverbed deeper and deeper inland, where the fog grew dense and the cicada calls and birdsongs grew more intense. Down in a creek we played, cooling our tired feet in the water, while competing who could throw stones and make them bounce and bounce across the surface. In the distance, the tops of mountains seemed to appear and vanish behind a thin veil of mist and drizzle like shy children unwilling to show their faces too long.

But it did not take long before I could see what lay behind that wall of mountains that stretched into the distance. Who would have thought that my uncle kindly invited us to stay at a resort located in Hualien in Eastern Taiwan, and even bought us the train tickets to get there. He said my mum really needed a break, from city life, from her therapy and from everything else that has been happening. And so we boarded the train and for the first time ever, I traveled on the
South Link line (南迴鐵路), which links Kaohsiung with the less accessible parts of the island. The line effectively makes a U-turn before heading northwards again along the eastern sea coast.

After passing through a number of very long tunnels, as my eyes were just getting used to the bright sunlight, there, before me, lay the blue, blue Pacific. Beautiful turquoise closer to the black sandy shoreline, turning darker blue in the distance, with white waves washing silently onto the shore. In the distance, little fishing boats rocked gently on the waves, while vague silhouettes of offshore islands loomed in the outer seas. On the other side, a row of mountains, lush and green, each with different faces, all competing with one another to stand tall and broad in the radiant sunlight. The train slid through the valleys, snaking through tunnel after tunnel, and climbed along cliff edges until eventually we reached our destination.

The weather was not all too pleasant to begin with when we arrived, and it rained the whole afternoon and night. We walked through the resort, and chitchatted the time away on a rocking chair near the pond, where swarms of fish begged with open mouths for us to feed them.
Though it was raining, the birds sang and flew around us freely, and in the distance mountains changed their faces with the coming and waning of drifting clouds of mist. The next morning, we woke up early, to a lightly overcast sky, and decided to go cycling in the area. On our bikes, we rode to the riverside, across the broad estuary and ventured into the lands of the Amis Aboriginals (阿美族).

For thousands of years, this island originally belonged to the dozen or so Aboriginal tribes. More than anyone else who live on Taiwan, the aboriginals are the true Formosa islanders, who have for generations lived in harmony with the land and the sea, worshiped the rocks and mother nature, and prayed to their ancestors and the skies for a good harvest. Some anthropologists say that given the strong linguistic and cultural ties with the Austronesian people, it may be that those Aboriginals in the Polynesians and Australia are descendants of Formosan aboriginals who sailed the oceans tens of thousands of years ago. With the influx of Han (Hokkien/Hakka) immigrants starting around four hundred years ago, the Aboriginals were forced to give up their lands and to take refuge in the mountains. For a long time, the government wrongly labeled Aboriginals as "Mountain People" (山地人), for it was through military actions and forced expulsions that many of the Aboriginals moved towards the mountain areas.


Though many of the Ami (and other Aboriginals) have today been assimilated into Taiwanese society, their culture and history remains intricately woven with the nature and land, and today ecotourism as well as agriculture seems to be their main sources of income. The government has made reserves to protect these rare peoples, whose language and population are dwindling fast due to the lure of urban life elsewhere. Unemployment as well as alcoholism is rampant in these forgotten rural areas of the country. Few walk around aboriginal villages in their traditional clothes, but they are very recognisable by their darker skin tones and much bigger and sturdier body build and facial features. Especially the Amis women are praised for their beauty, and social life is reputed to be based on a matriarchy. Also well-known is their singing and chanting, of which the Amis "Jubilant Drinking Song" was illegallly stolen by Enigma to produce their world-wide hit "Return to Innocence".

We cycled past paddies of rice, fields of watermelon, as well as plantations overgrown with passion fruit, bananas, pineapples and sugar-apples (locally known as Sakya (釋迦), named after the Buddha Sakyamuni, because the fruit resembles the shape of his head). Wild Formosan White Lilies decorate the sides of the road, while mountains stretched like curved back of a resting majestic dragon into the horizon. Birds sang gaily, and butterflies fluttered around in the green grass, as wild dogs slept in the middle of the road. No wonder the locals are so at peace with their surroundings and with nature. In the valley below, there were the ugly and polluting quarry and nosiy, massive trucks. These monsters ferried free sand dug from the riverbed and rocks cut from the mountains to be sold in the cities that demanded more and more cement and concrete for the erection of unearthly tall buildings in the drive for urbanisation and economic growth.

We left the sleepy village at the foothills of the mountains, and headed home. Back to the urban jungle, where the singsong of birds are drowned out by the din of cars and construction, back to the overgrown mass of buildings, where trees and greens seem a rarity. Another face of Taiwan, hundreds of kilometres away, has somehow managed to maintain its beauty and serenity.