Yangming Shan National Park

Taipei is located in a basin, and sits less then twenty metres above sea level.  As the crow flies, it is around twenty kilometres from the ocean.  Despite that, between Taipei and the coast the mountains shoot up to a height of over 1,000 metres.  The mountains between Taipei and the coast form the Datun Volcano Group (大屯火山群) within Yangming Shan National Park (陽明山國家公園 ).  The volcanoes are now all extinct, but there are still hot sulfur springs and sulfur fumaroles in the area.

When I was living in Taipei I would often go hiking in the national park.  The weather in Taipei is usually uniformly cloudy and smoggy, presumably exacerbated by the way it is situated within a basin, but on occasions I have hiked through fog to the top of the highest mountain in Yangming Shan National Park, Qixing Shan ("Seven-star Mountain" - 七星山) to emerge on top of a sea of cloud from which only the mountain-peaks around Taipei could be seen. 

We had Yangming Shan on our list of places that we wanted to take the  kids while we were there, and for the first week or so we were waiting for better weather to make the visit.  Eventually it became clear that a Taipei winter wasn't going to give us any better weather, so we just decided to go and see what our luck delivered with the conditions at the top of the mountains.  We caught the MRT across to Shilin (士林) then caught a bus up into the mountains.  At the end of the line for the normal city bus it was already sleeting and misty.  At the bus station a grumpy driver told us that the shuttle bus into the national park left every half hour, but cautioned that there wouldn't be anything to see and we should have wet-weather gear.  It's never a good sign when you start an expedition by making a mental note that you will need to confess to any subsequent coronial inquest that you were warned against it.  In my defense, I will say that I planned to stay in close touch with the route of the shuttle bus, and figured it would be difficult to actually die of hypothermia within the half-hour interval between buses.

There were just us and two others on the shuttle bus, and the trip along foggy roads was distinctly hair-raising.  No doubt the driver drove those roads a dozen times a day, every day of his life, and could probably drive them with his eyes closed, but the way he threw the bus around, through hair-pin mountain bends in the fog, was really nerve-wracking.  The impression was really assisted by the fact he appeared to have a nasty case of indigestion, and belched loudly every two minutes or so during our trip.  I was already apprehensive about taking the kids into the hiking conditions, but in the end it was actually a relief to get off the bus, out onto a foggy road in the middle of nowhere.  We found the entrance to the trail and walked a couple of kilometres to the next signpost, only to find that we had walked in completely the wrong direction for our objective.  At that stage the parental warning bells could no longer be ignored, and we decided to just wait there for the the next shuttle bus so that we could do something more sensible.

When the bus came we hopped on with the intention of going back to the bus station to go back down the mountains, but as we travelled around the circuit the geography started to fall into place and on impulse we hopped off at Xiaoyoukeng (小油坑 - "Little Oil Pit"), the site of the fumaroles.  It turned out that Xiaoyoukeng was only a stone's throw from the entrance to the trail up Qixing Shan - so in the past I must have hiked past Xiaoyoukeng literally dozens of times without noticing it.  I guess that can be one of the hazards of travelling by foot.  While travelling slowly and close to the ground can be good for noticing things on the way, it can mean that you might miss-out on something that it only a few hundred metres from your path - something you would easily have seen by driving a few seconds further.

Xiaoyoukeng is an old sulphur-mining area covered in fumaroles belching steam and sulphur dioxide into the air.  Because of the fog we didn't get a good view of the area, but were able to see a lot of smaller fumaroles up close - an interesting experience for the kids. I've put some videos of the fumaroles here and here.

After visiting the fumaroles we walked a few hundred metres up Qixing Shan, and got a couple of good views back down through the fog towards Xiaoyoukeng.  My hope was that the kids would get the experience of emerging from the top of the clouds, but we decided to bail-out due to the cold, the steepness of the track, and how slippery the trail was.  All-in-all an interesting and unusual day, but it was good to see the shuttle bus pull back in at the bottom of the Qixing Shan track for the trip back to the bus station.

Irresponsible parents take their children out to hike in foggy conditions on mountain paths.

An example of the sort of trails inside the national park.

Still smiling at this stage.

The mountain track up Qixing Shan, with a type of small bamboo forest.

On the way up Qixing Shan.

On the way up Qixing Shan.

From part way up Qixing Shan, looking back down on Xiaoyoukeng through the mist.

On the way up Qixing Shan.

An example of the occasional difficulties in relying on signs to find your way around Taiwan if you don't read Chinese.  The Chinese says "Xiaoyoukeng", while the transcription reads "Erziping" - a completely different place.

Danshui / Tamsui

Taipei is located on the Danshui River ( 淡水河), and Danshui is a city near the mouth of the river.  In olden times, Danshui was basically the main coastal trading port for Taipei, although originally the Danshui River was navigable, and small ocean-going vessels could travel all the way up the river to Taipei to trade in tea and camphor.  The river is now silted-up, and I don't think I've seen anything bigger than a dragon boat beyond the river mouth itself.

Given its location at the mouth of the river, Danshui has long had strategic military value, and was the entry-point for a number of expeditions by European powers.  As a result, one of the key landmarks in Danshui today is Fort San Domingo, called 紅毛城 or "red hair fort" in Chinese - "the fort of the red haired people".  The original fort was made of wood and was built by the Spanish in 1629.  Wikipedia tells me that the original fort was stormed and burnt by locals, then the replacement stone fort was demolished by the Spanish themselves after they were beaten by the Dutch at nearby Jilung.  The Dutch built a new fort on the site, and then built the current structure in 1644 - quite remarkable to think that the current building is over 350 years old.  The British took over the fort from the Qing Goverment following the Opium Wars, and held it until 1980 - some eight years after breaking-off diplomatic relations with the Republic of China.

The trek from Taipei out to Danshui used to be a fairly major undertaking, with a long bus trip, but now there is a Mass Rapid Transit station right in the middle of Danshui, and it has become a lot closer to Taipei.  The new MRT station at Danshui has been built with red brick, in a style to echo Fort San Domingo.

From the MRT station we walked along the waterfront out towards the river mouth.  In the last twenty years the authorities have clearly put a lot of money into developing the water-front parks, and there is a line of restaurants, cafes, shops and amusement arcades.  To keep people walking we had to make commitments to visit the amusement arcades on the way back, and in particular to try-out the BB-gun shooting galleries.

One thing that was interesting in Danshui was to see the impact made there by George MacKay, a Canadian Presbyterian Missionary based in northern Taiwan from around 1870 until his death in 1901.  MacKay had first entered my consciousness in the name of one of the major hospitals in Taipei, the 馬偕紀念醫院, which I now know to mean the "MacKay Memorial Hospital".  Everyone calls it "馬偕醫院" or "Majie Hospital", using MacKay's Chinese name.  While it perhaps should have been obvious to me that "Majie" was a phonetic transcription of a Western name, it was quite a while before I realised this, and even then I wasn't aware of who exactly MacKay was.  Subsequently I stumbled over old black-and-white photos of "Majie" conducting an open-air dental clinic, and started to join the dots. 

MacKay appears to have been an incredible ball of energy, and established churches, hospitals and schools right across northern Taiwan.  He married a Taiwanese wife, and by all accounts he spoke fluent Taiwanese.  While the legacy of missionaries in China generally is complex, the affection for MacKay in Taiwan, and in Danshui in particular, seems fairly unambiguous. 

In Danshui today there are prominent statues to MacKay, and his house and first school have all been lovingly preserved.

A photo of George MacKay (with pith-helmet and longflowing beard) conducting an open-air dental clinic.  The man in the straw hat is a local assistant.  At far left is a Formosan Aborigine - apparently a lot of MacKay's patients and converts were lowlands aborigines.

I've tracked-down a copy of MacKay's book From Far Formosa - the Island, its People and Missions.  Despite the fact that MacKay had a Doctorate in Divinity he appears to have been more of a man of action than a writer, and I think the book is heavily ghost-written by the "editor", provided by the Presbyterian Church to capture MacKay's story for posterity.  The constant reference to "heathens" is amusing, but perhaps not surprising for the time.  Starting from zero knowledge of Chinese, MacKay (or perhaps his editor on his behalf) describes himself as having "mastered" the eight tones of Taiwanese in three weeks.  My experience is that for an adult who has grown-up outside an environment of tonal languages, it would take much, much longer than three weeks before you could be said to have "mastered" any tones, let alone eight of them.

After a kilometre or so of walking along the river's edge, we headed inland and up the hill to Fort San Domingo.   There was a high school group touring the buildings at the same time as us, so we were able to listen-in to the talk that they received on the history of the fort.  The presenter emphasised the role of the building as a symbol of the shame that had been inflicted on China by foreigners, and the pride in having the ROC flag flying over it today.  Amusingly, she also emphasised the shamelessness of the British in claiming the fort following the Opium Wars, and then even greater shamelessness in holding on to the fort following the end of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the ROC in 1972.  The building was actually occupied and maintained by the Australian government for a period after the UK pulled-out.

Of note for me was the fact that one of the British consuls to be housed at Fort San Domingo was Herbert Giles, one of the inventors of the Wade-Giles system of romanisation of Chinese.  Obviously there is a challenge in capturing Chinese sounds with the Latin writing system, which has led to a range of competing transcription systems.  While the Mainland has long used the Hanyu pinyin system, the ROC has resisted that (presumably because it was an invention of the Communist Bandits), and continued to use a range of inconsistent systems, although I think Wade-Giles was the official transcription system.  Interestingly, when we visited the National Palace Museum there was a notice saying that they were in the process of converting all of their labelling from the Wade-Giles system to Hanyu Pinyin, finally acknowledging the logic and simplicity and (more or less) intuitiveness of the Mainland system.  Anyway, the key point is that Mr Giles is a star in the Sinological hagiography, and it was an unexpected bonus to find that he had been based in Danshui for several years. 

On the way back to the MRT station we stopped at a BB-gun shooting gallery where the owner took pity on our general lack of co-ordination and taught us how to be more effective at blowing away innocent balloons.  The BB-guns were just low-powered air pistols, but seeing as they were made to look like a Colt 45, you can imagine that the younger members of the group were quite thrilled at getting to play with firearms.

A view of Guanyin Mountain from the river's edge at Danshui.  It is called "Guanyin Mountain" because it supposedly resembles the form of the reclining Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin.

An excited foreign tourist in Danshui.

A view of Fort San Domingo.

Fort San Domingo - detail from basement level.  It's interesting that the construction is sandstone, which doesn't seem to be common in the area. 

A sculpture in the courtyard outside the basement at Fort San Domingo.  I am assuming he is supposed to be Dutch.  One has to admire his taste in board shorts.

A view from inside the cells in the basement of Fort San Domingo, looking back towards the consular residence.  The cells were used for administering extra-territorial justice to British citizens.

A detail of the terra cotta tiles on an outbuilding to Fort San Domingo.

The red bricks of the facade on the fort.

The consular residence at Fort San Domingo.

Antique iron cannons at Fort San Domingo.

An inscription on one of the cannons, either indicating where it was made, or where it was made for - in this case 艋舺 or Mengjia / Monga, the old name for the riverside settlement and trading port in Taipei, in what is modern-dayWanhua.

This inscription says that the cannon was made in the 18th year of the Emperor Jiaqing (嘉慶) - so 1778.

The consular residence.

Fort San Domingo from the inland side.

The consular residence.

The consular residence.

Looking through the windows of the consular residence.

A traditional Chinese river boat in Danshui.

Stuff that didn't fit anywhere else

We were in Taiwan for the presidential election.  In Taiwan there is apparently no such thing as a postal vote or an absentee vote, and you have to return to your registered domicile to vote.  On the eve of the election there was an incredible line of coaches at the bus terminal, either bringing people back from the south to vote in Taipei, or taking them back down south to vote.  It feels very biblical - I wonder if there was room at the inn when everyone got there.

The Taipei Holiday jade market - an Aladdin's Cave of jade, jewellery, rocks and minerals...  Among the stallholders there was one who basically had piles of rocks from riverbeds just heaped on the benchtop - graded into different qualities at different prices.  He explained that it was rough Hetian jade (和田玉) and chalcedony from Hetian in Xinjiang, and that he'd bought it from Uighurs in Shanghai who had almost certainly illegally harvested it back home in Xinjiang.  It was fascinating to learn the word for chalcedony in Chinese -  玉髓 or "jade marrow".  The jade market is located in a carpark under an overhead expressway, and adjoins first the flower market, and then the art market.  I'd forgotten the way in which art is a common occupation for the deaf, so it was a delight to discover all over again the significant Deafness of the art market - to find ourselves in an environment where sign-language conversations were being held everywhere across the length and width of the market.

The West Gate Red Building - an octagonal Japanese-era building that was the site of the main markets for the Japanese colonial officials and their families.  It's located on the edge of Ximending (西門町), which is a commercial district near the site of the old west gate in the Taipei city walls.

A pallet of motor scooters at Carrefour in Xindian.  From an Australian perspective it seemed odd to see a pallet of motorbikes in what is effectively a supermarket.

A statue of the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin,  in the Da An Forest Park.  What is special about this (for me) is that the statue used to be next to International House, the grubby hostel where I stayed when I first arrived in Taiwan.  International House was demolished to make way for the park, as were the military barracks behind it, and the shanty-town alongside it - but they kept the statue of  Guanyin.  When I first arrived in Taiwan I spent a lot of time sitting out with Guanyin writing letters.  My memories of International House are not exactly fond - it was a bit of a dump.  The common showers were never cleaned, and the walls and floor were coated in slime that was literally centimetres thick.

This is a delightful Chinese-style pagoda at an intersection in Shilin - perhaps for traffic police?  If you look closely, you will see that it is actually a pill box, built as a precaution against invasion or military coup - see the machine gun slits in the concrete base.  The intersection is a major cross-roads near the former residence of Chiang Kai-shek.  There is a remarkable juxtaposition of elegant aesthetics and the brutal facts of a military dictatorship on an island at war.  The pillbox is now abandoned.

We stumbled across a Lego speciality store - a pokey little shop up a flight of stairs, sharing premises with a couple of budget clothing stores.  As you can imagine, there were members of our tour who were rather excited at the prospect of a Lego speciality store.  As well as the normal kits, they had walls full of individual spare pieces, and a display case full of individual Lego people that you could buy separately.  The day we found the shop was the day before Chinese New Year's Eve, and it was funny to see a little boy on the mobile phone to his father, negotiating for permission to buy a kit.  The boy was tallying-up how much money he had, and how much he expected to make in red packet money for New Year from his various relatives - basically looking for permission to pre-spend his New Year loot.  I didn't hear how the conversation ended. 

The shop attendant was a young woman wearing a top with a single English word printed on it - "estrus".  Maybe she thought it was a cool American brand.  While I doubt he understood the word on the top, there was a big nerdy guy in the shop, probably in his early twenties, who appeared to be chatting-up the shop assistant.  He was telling her he'd just got a new job where he was going to be paid in Renminbi and US dollars, and asking her whether the shop (yes, the Lego shop)  accepted Renminbi and US dollars.  I figure that if he's being paid in Renminbi and US dollars then a more pressing problem is figuring out how to convert them to local currency so that he will be able to eat - securing his Lego supply should have been a second-order priority.  I suspect he was just trying to big-note himself with the shop assistant - you can perhaps understand that if you are a confused twenty-something Lego-nerd the idea of finding a woman who not only works in a Lego-shop (maybe she gets discounts?) but possibly even shares your passion for Lego, would look like a match made in heaven.

Weird signs, posters and ads in Taiwan

This is a collection of (largely perfectly correct) signs, posters and advertisements that struck me as quirky...

The translator had a real challenge with this one.  It's a pun on a children's clapping game where you have to say "change, change, change" - "bian, bian, bian".  The sound "bian" is also a polite word for "excrement", as well as a word for "classify", so "Super changing excrement classification" becomes "Super bian bian bian".  I have no idea how I would have tried to translate it into English more effectively than "Classify your feces!"...

I'm fairly sure this is what we'd call a "paperbark".  The Chinese name means "white thousand layers", presumably a reference to the layers of "paperbark".  I just enjoyed the fact that it's a punk tree.

"This shop uses Australian beef - please eat with confidence."

I've never been totally sure what it means to "jigger".  Having seen this sign, I'm still not sure.

An ad for a laxative.  The tagline is "Aren't you finished yet?!?!"

A poster from the Mass Rapid Transit system - "Strike back against sexual harassment".  Click on the photo to take a closer look at the expression on the perpetrator's face.

Branding on some sort of plumbing equipment.  I think it's supposed to be a blend of "ever" and "integrity".

What on earth is "Angel Cigar Fun"?

"Pimp 99 For Man" - I think this was a hairdressers.

This is a pun - it can either be read "I love to go on it" or "I've fallen in love with it."  It's an ad for a bidet addition to your toilet.

"The driver of this bus has returned a normal alcohol test - please ride with confidence."  Two issues with this: 1.  the sign sits there all day, regardless of what bus turns up, and 2. it doesn't say our bus driver had a zero alcohol reading - just a normal one.

I don't recall the Chinese name - presumably it was something like "Fu Long Hotel".  The English name they chose was "The Fullon Hotel."  Hopefully it is the service that is "full on".

A sign at Jiufen.  The literal reading of the sign is something like "Inserted house alley".  It turns out that this is a tunnel / alleyway that twists and turns and goes underneath / between houses.