Formosa Holiday

I returned Saturday night from a 4-day tour of Taiwan, in which we got to see a lot of the island, including areas far removed from Taipei (and China) both geographically and culturally. My parents and I had a wonderful time. Our tour guide was named Thomas Xie - a former elementary school history teacher well versed in Taiwan's rich and tragic history and the island's unique culture. On our tour was a tall Dutch couple, a former Chinese diplomat who now runs a business in Flushing, a well traveled Australian couple (the husband was a veteran of the Vietnam War), a Taiwanese-American family from Edison in New Jersey, and a couple now living in Taiwan with a 3 year old son (the husband is from Japan and the wife is from China). The diversity of the group required Thomas to give the tour in English, Mandarin, and sometimes Japanese. This was great practice for me and allowed me to hear about the history, culture, geography, and cuisine of the island in both languages.

Taiwan is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Its beauty is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Snow peaked mountains, some of the tallest in Asia, slope down to palm-tree lined beaches. Fog rolls off the hills across seaside Aboriginal village Catholic cemeteries. Buddhist and Daoist shrines line the winding roads which can take one past beetlenut plantations, rice paddies, family factories, quaint mountain towns, and historic ports. The cities are dense, cultural rich, and excited, with millions of scooters zipping in every directions and night markets filled with delicious food.

Geographically, Taiwan is mostly mountainous with the Taipei basin to the north, the western plain, and narrow strips of flat land on the east. Most of the population lives on the western plains or in Taipei. The five biggest cities are Taipei (Taibei), Gaoxiong (Kaohsiong), Taizhong (Taichung), Tainan, and Jilong (Keelung). From the southernmost point (Kenting National Park), the tip of Luzon in the Philipines can be seen in the distance and from Keelung on a clear day, the corner of Okinawa can be seen. Portuguese explorers who "discovered" Taiwan, named it Ilha Formosa - the beautiful island.

The YuanZhuMin (aboriginal people) of Taiwan have lived on the island for thousands of years. Part of what anthropologists refer to as the Austronesian peoples, they share a common ancestry with people as far away from eachother as New Zealand, Hawaii, Indonesia, and the Philipines. Originally, they lived in both the plains and the mountains and spoke a variety of languages. The Spanish were the first of many foreign powers to come to Taiwan. They brought with them guns, greed (they were looking for gold), crops, and Catholicism (many of Taiwan's aborigines today are Catholic). The Dutch came next, and seeing the fertile soils of Taiwan would be good for their sugar plantations, created a colony. They brought death to the aborigines and slavery to Chinese. Bringing in Hokkien and Hakka indentured servants from southern China, they transformed the Taiwanese plains into Sugar plantations. They left their mark on the island - today most of the island is descended from the Chinese workers they brought over, farmers still use the Morgan (based on the Dutch hectacre as opposed to the Chinese Mu), and Tomatoes and Dairy Cows are still a part of the Taiwanese countryside.

They were defeated and driven from the Island by the great warrior, pirate, and hero Koxinga, revered today as a god in Taiwan. Koxinga, the son of a great Fujianese warrior-pirate and a Japanese mother was handed leadership of the collapsing Ming Dynasty by the last Ming Emporer as the Ming forces fled the Manchu hordes. Fleeing from his native Fujian, he arrived in the Dutch colony of Taiwan where he liberated the island from Dutch rule with his impressive 3,000 ship pirate fleet. Rumored to have had superhuman strength, statues and shrines to Koxinga abound in the city he died in, Tainan. There his small kingdom held out for a few decades before being flooded by the Manchus. Like the Guomindang 300 years later, he would never reclaim China. Tainan today is an amazing city where old architecture and cosmopilatan urbanism intertwine - at the meeting point of the mountains and sea.

We visited an old Dutch fort which later held the guns of Koxinga and later the Manchus. Under the Japanese it was a hospital, and today it is a museum/ Daoist temples. In the courtyard to the front, a statue depicts a muscular and very manly Koxinga flanked by tough warriors forcing the Dutch governor to surrender. Stone turtles to the front of the main building carry tablets in Chinese and Manchu from the Qing era. On the top floor of the main building is a shrine to the God of testing and education before which anxious students asked for help with their exams and discertation. from the balcony, much of beautiful and historic Tainan can be seen.

We also got to see the Koxinga shrine. Out front is a statue of the ultra-masculine Koxinga, riding a horse and wearing full battle gear. He looks a lot like actor the Kaneshiro Takeshi. His shrine includes a beautiful image of him wearing the imperial dragon - but since he was not the true emporer he wore a blue shirt not a yellow shirt. Below the large newer image is the older small stature of him - made of carved black wood in true Daoist style. It reminded me of a Daoist I had seen near Yingge. There, the statues of the Daoist gods were also carved from black wood. Their gaunt faces representing old heros in Fujian who had resisted the Manchus.

Manchu rule passed to Japanese and in turn to the Guomindang Party which ruled the island with an iron fist until the 1980's when democratic reforms ended martial law. In the era of martial law, the Mainlanders (who came in 1949 and now make up 12% of Taiwan) dominated economic and cultural life. The remaining 88% of the population persevered through massacres, forced learning of Mandarin, and a political policy that focused on China while igorning domestic issues. Today, 70% of Taiwan is Hokkien, 15% is Hakka, and 3% are of the various aboriginal tribes (with Ami and Atayal being the larges). Though intermarriage has blurred all these barriers and today's Taiwan appears a cultural melting pot. Taiwanese farmers chew betelnuts that aborginal peoples brought from Malaysia thousands of years ago. Hakka merchants speak Mandarin to their customers. Working class Hakka and Mainlanders in the south chat in Taiwanese with their Hokkien friends. Chinese tourists snap photos of busy Taipei streets where young students enjoy sushi and beef noodle soup. It really is an amazing place and the culture of the island is quite unique.

The original people of Taiwan, the Aborigines, make up only a fraction of Taiwan's population today. The one's on the western plains intermarried and assimilated with generations of Hakka and Hokkien immigrants. However, in the central mountain range and on the east coast, aboriginal peoples still make up a large portion of the population, being a significant minority in many counties and a clear majority in dozens of townships and small cities. Given Taiwan's democratic system, even 3% of the population is enough to swing elections, and the aboriginal populations, once neglected, are now experiencing a cultural renaissance and renewed political power.

Much of this also comes from the desire of the Taiwanese people to distinguish themselves from China by promoting the island's aboriginal heritage. And the way aboriginal culture is represented often leaves out much of the bloody history of their subjection, overemphasizes aspects of their culture such as hunting and headhunting (many aboriginal people primarily farmed) and borders on exoticism or "oriental orientalism". Over a third of aborigines remain unemployed and drinking and drug abuse are serious issues in many communities. Nonetheless, Taiwan has come a long way from the days when the KMT dumped nuclear waste on Yami land or when the Mandarin was the only language allowed in public use.

While around Sun Moon Lake, we briefly visited the Thao reservation in the area and while on the East Coast, we saw a dance performance by some of the local high school kids.

Perhaps the most important contribution of aboriginal people to modern Taiwan has been the betelnut. Brought in from Malaysia thousands of years ago, the nuts are grown all over rural Taiwan and consumed by many Taiwanese for energy, stamina, focus, and relaxation. Usually, betelnuts are sold on the side of the road by girls in revealing outfits in stores which are easy to distinguish by their trademark flashing lights. It is rumored that regular consumption of the nuts over many decades erodes the stomach, but in the short term, chewing the nuts can strengthen the immune system. The slim, palm tree-like betelnut trees dot mountainsides throughout Taiwan and their overproduction has had negative effects for the environment and local farmers. Replacing natural forests with betelnut monoculture has left the soil weak and subject to erosion following earthquakes, Typhoons, or other natural disasters. Overexploitation has severely contributed to deflation (eight trees used to reap enough profit to put a student through college). A shortage of manpower in the countryside means that dead trees are often left standing, perhaps 20% of all betelnut trees now standing on Taiwanese soil. The soil may also be loosing nutrients do to overexploitation.

Well, I tried some betelnuts my dad and I got in Gaoxiong. It was a lot of fun to chew on them and spit out the juices - made me feel like a combination of a Taiwanese farmer and an American baseball player. The taste was not great, but the experience definitely left me feeling a more than a little high. Quite pleasant actually.

Some of the best scenery of the trip was at Sun Moon Lake and at Taroko Gorge. Both are grand in scale and beauty (and flooded with tourists), and quite breathtaking. Sun Moon Lake is eerily green (blue at times) and looks unbelievable from a nearby peak. The hike up the hill was not too challenging and ended with a pagoda and villa Chiang Kai-Shek had ordered built for his mother. While speeding on narrow mountain rounds through Taroko Gorge with thousand foot drops beneath us in a giant bus might not have been the most pleasant of experiences, the view was great. Milky blue lime water rushes between gigantic rock cliffs which give way to wooded slopes and epic peaks at higher elevations. The Gorge was truly mind-numbing. My mom found the winding slopes and steep drops frightening and I have to admit at times I found it more comfortable to shut my eyes for a few minutes.

We spent the second night of our round-island tour at Gaoxiong, Taiwan's second largest city and largest port. We saw the famed "love canal" and tried local snacks at a night market including fried mushrooms, cheese and potato buns, sugar cane juice, papaya smoothie, and betelnuts. While we were not in Gaoxiong very long, from what I could gather it was a really big city whose industrial and rural hinterland spread throughout southern Taiwan.

We had a great time in the Kenting National Park, whose clear waters, palm trees, and brutal heat were unlike anything I'd ever seen before. From at old Qing Dynasty fort we could see Luzon (the Philippines) in the distance. I tried some fresh coconut juice from a local vendor. Eventually we arrived on the East Coast Where I stepped in the Pacific (with my waterproof boots on since we didn't really have a lot of time there), looked out over the ocean, and took photos with my dad. This was the first time I had ever been to the Pacific Ocean.

The small seaside city of Taitung was among my favorite places on our tour. Small, charming, and easygoing, the city seemed to capture the essence of Taiwan in its people, history, food, and atmosphere. We spent the night at a lovely hotel where we got to try local food including shaved ice, delicious veggies, and some local aboriginal treats. Early the next morning when my mom sent me out to get her coffee from the local 7-11, I got to explore the city at dawn. Few pedestrians and scooters passed on the street at 5am. I walked through old narrow streets where stray dogs were enjoying a good morning scratch past unopened stores and restaurants to the nearest 7-11. There I was informed that that particular 7-11 did not have coffee until later in the day and I was given rough directions to another 7-11. Naturally, I got lost and soon had to ask directions from two kind older ladies who unfortunately only spoke Taiwanese. With some effort and a lot of hand gestures, they managed to explain to me where to go. I definitely want to return to this part of Taiwan sometime again.

On the train ride from Hualien to Taipei I noticed a strange phenomenon that I had sometimes noticed on the subway. The train stops were announced not only in Mandarin, but also in Taiwanese and Hakka. While no aboriginal languagest were included and just about anyone on the train could have understood enough Mandarin (the stops were also announced in English for us foreigners), the simple gesture of including Taiwanese and Hakka on the train announcements spoke volumes of the differenced between Taiwan and America. It would be amazing to hear train stops announced on New York subways in Spanish and Chinese.

While on the tour, we had an opportunity to meet and interact with a variety of interesting people including Hoppy, the aforementioned Australian Vietnam War veteran. Having traveled all over the world including Russia, Singapore, America, Canada, and China (his wife and him were among the first Western tourists allowed in Xinjiang during the 1980's). He can crack a coconut open with his bare hands, carries around a Rambo-esque knife, loves beer, and refuses to eat rice or drink tea. His wife is a direct descendant of a Polynesian Queen (I think Samoan) and had an ancestor who owned a plantation in Papua New Guinea during the 19th century. They were certainly an interesting couple to get to know and talk to.

I personally enjoyed talking to and learning from Michele, a former Chinese diplomat who now runs a business in Flushing, Queens. We talked about the countries she had been to, what it was like being separated from her family while away serving her government, her views on Chinese history, her experiences during the Cultural Revolution, and love of Alishan tea.

Pictures:

Aboriginal Mural of Deer somewhere in a mountain town.

Temple in Taroko Gorge

Clouds Rolling off Mountains

Hiking in Kenting NP

Lighthouse

Kenting

Gaoxiong Skyline

Koxinga Statue

Temple Above Sun Moon Lake

Pagoda above Sun Moon Lake that Chiang Kai-Shek built for himself.

Taroko Gorge

Koxinga Shrine

Me, standing in front of the Pacific Ocean.

Dragon Fish in Gaoxiong

View of Sun Moon Lake.