High above the noisy concrete and aluminium boulevards of Taipei, way beyond the city’s vertiginous skyscrapers, neon lights and elevated high-speed railway tracks, almost floating in the clouds, distinct and apart, as if in another world, lies a garden of heavenly peace.
Its name is the Hongmuwu (Red Wood) Tea House, and it sits in the wooded hills above Taipei, its sudden tranquillity contrasting with the earnest urban bustle below, a soothing tonic for the worn of mind and spirit.
Seated on a shaded wooden chair beside a tinkling fountain that feeds pools flickering with orange and silver carp, I watched Hongmuwu’s jolly proprietress initiate afternoon tea with smiles and signs.
First, she poured boiling water into a large, brown, earthenware teapot with a bamboo handle. The pot was already primed with the famous locally grown tie guan yin tea. This first infusion was poured off and more water was added. Then a second teapot came into play, round china cups were warmed and, after the requisite brewing period, the contents were transferred again, this time into a small jug. All this was done swiftly and deftly. Small bowls of sugared cashews, dried mango and sweet tea plums appeared on the table.
As at last the dark, light-tasting liquid was poured out, great beams of sunshine lanced down into the valleys below. The city’s glass and steel glistened from afar. Tea was served.
Tie guan yin, the best known Chinese oolong tea, can be translated as “iron goddess of mercy”, an appropriate name given that the most fun way to reach the Hongmuwu Tea House high in the wooded hills above Taipei is by a 4km cable-car ride that tops 300m at its highest point. Gondolas carrying up to eight people climb from the Jingmei river basin near Taipei Zoo station in a half-hour ride over treetops and gulleys to Maokong station. Numerous tea houses, temples, gardens and walking trails are then within easy reach.
Floating on the outer edge of Asia, looking west towards Red China and east into the blue Pacific, Taiwan has many ways of lifting the spirits.
‘Renegade province’
Beyond its shores, the island is known for its unresolved, peaceful stand-off with Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a “renegade province”. The dispute dates back to the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war.
It boasts a democratically elected government, a robust devotion to capitalism and a cutting-edge, hi-tech, export-led economy that has rendered “Made in Taiwan” a globally recognisable marque. It has world-class healthcare, an impressive high-speed rail network and ambitions to become an Asian transport hub.
Today, a gradual improvement in relations between Taiwan and its giant neighbour is producing beneficial spin-offs, direct and indirect. Chinese tourism to Taiwan is booming. Bilateral trade and investment are growing.
Downtown Taipei is a busy, modern-looking city that combines the energetic feel of Tokyo with an American-style grid system. But there is a lot more beneath the glitz. There is the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, a truly monumental permanent tribute to the founding father of the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name). Among the displays are photographs of the great man with Churchill, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Nixon. His 1950s armoured Cadillac is preserved in all its glory, as is the Order of the Bath, presented to him by British admirers.
The National Palace Museum is home to the crown jewels of imperial China, brought to Taiwan from the mainland by Chiang’s fleeing nationalists. I found it a place of great beauty, art and abounding treasure. Taipei 101, until recently the world’s tallest building, should not be missed: its elevators, travelling at about 60km/h, are the fastest in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records. At the top is a giant suspended damper, designed to compensate for unwanted movement caused by earthquakes (the last big one was in 1999).
And a walk on Taipei’s wild side is incomplete without a visit to the Night Market in Shinlin district. Pig-blood cakes, stinking tofu, coconut-dough rolls, oyster omelettes, meat and spring onion steamed dumplings and bitter melon juice drinks are some of the myriad delicacies (and staples) on sale amid much noisy chatter and startlingly low prices. Once sated, the itinerant gaijin (foreign) gourmet can try his luck at fairground shooting ranges or lose her shirt at mah jong.
But when city life begins to pall, Taiwan offers something else, something more that is sometimes amazing. A cheap 35-minute domestic flight south and east to Hualien county, then a short drive into the Taroko national park, brought me into the heart of the spectacular Taroko gorge.
Mile after mile of narrow, twisting road tracks the tumbling, aquamarine waters of the Liwu river as it descends from a host of snow-capped mountains, including one of Taiwan’s highest, Mount Nanhu, at 3 742m. The rock here is sheer marble, massive, glistening and immovable — until an imperceptible tremor sends sharp shards crashing to the road. Signs warn, with good reason, “Do not linger”. Hard hats are de rigueur.
The national park offers numerous walking trails and the gorge is home to a wide range of plants, mammals, oversized butterflies and birds, including tiny swallows that have colonised the many caves along the trail. The road runs through tunnels cut at great human cost by Chiang’s demobilised soldiers. It follows a route developed by the Japanese imperial army during its pre-1945 occupation of Taiwan.
Home of the Truku people
But the Japanese were interlopers here, too. Historically speaking, this land belonged to the indigenous Taroko (Truku) people, a Pacific islander race now dispossessed like so many of their kind. At the Buluowan recreation area, roughly half-way up the gorge, their cultural heritage, or what’s left of it, can be seen in reception area displays and for sale in handicraft shops.
Buluowan, meaning “echo”, is a magical place, a natural river terrace surrounded by the almost vertical, heavily wooded cliffsthat the Taroko made their home. Like Taiwan’s other aboriginal tribes, they have mostly lost their birthright. But high in this enchanted gorge, their spirits linger, defying the signs.
The magical feel of the region is captured in the serene environs of the Silks Place hotel, high in the Taroko gorge, a haven of inimitable calm, soft carpets, luxurious massage, hushed dining and elegantly minimalist Japanese-style rooms.
As I lay there with the screen doors drawn back, listening to the susurrating rush of the mountain stream, thinking randomly of the day’s Buddhist temples and shaven monks, monkeys, hawks and incense, of lost dynasties of tattooed headhunters chased out of their land, sleep came easily, an escape within an escape.
South and west from Taipei the vistas are dramatically different. One hour on the high-speed train to Taichung, then an hour’s drive into the mountains, away from the industrialised, built-up coastal strip, brought me, around a final bend, to a memorable sight: the shimmering waters of famous Sun Moon Lake, a small, hidden sea in the heart of Taiwan, a secret Xanadu encircled by mountains.
This also is a place of trails and walking tours, cycle rides and boat trips, hotels and souvenir shops. But in aboriginal lore it is a holy place too. This is where Chiang Kai-shek, by then an old man and dun dictatin’, sat and contemplated all his works, like a latter-day Kubla Khan, listening for ancestral voices prophesying war.
Sun Moon Lake is where Chiang’s personal stately pleasure dome, now transformed into the ultra-luxurious Lalu hotel, is situated. The hotel is worth the journey by itself. Its exquisite three-room suites with their shuttered balconies, its unbroken views across the lake to far-off pagodas and misted hills, its polished Burmese teak floors, its fishponds, lilies and Japanese bonsai, its terraced restaurants and spas and, most of all, its modest, self-effacing architectural style combine to produce an almost transformative experience (at a price).
Lapping gently in the early morning air, shaded by newly greening frangipani trees and red hibiscus blossom, the over-spilling blue-green waters of the Lalu’s long outdoor pool seem to merge seamlessly with lake and sky. For a moment it was as though I was floating free, man and nature made one. Of course, it is a trick of the eye, a conceit of the heart. Or is it? As ever, Taiwan is more than it seems. — Guardian News & Media 2010