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I just got back from the Fulbright Taiwan Midyear Conference, this year in Hualien with a day trip to the nearby Taroko National Park. Here’s one for the travelogue. I had a great, stimulating trip with lots of talk of linguistics (mostly about Classical Chinese), religion, economics, and politics—some of my favorite subjects. This being a Dr. Wu gig, there was also of course ample food, and Taroko was absolutely stunning.

Day 1: Trains, buses, and talk

I met up with everyone in the morning at the Hualien train station. Living in Nanao, I actually live really close to Hualien (about 40-50m) so I just elected to take a local train and meet the crew there. We then drove around to a couple interesting coastal points. (The one taking pictures below is Dale… I’m sure his blog will soon have photos more beautiful than mine.)

An unfortunate theme of the trip was riding coach buses on ridiculously narrow roads atop steep cliffs, winding back and forth for thirty minutes at a time, and then check out a vista for 15 minutes, then get back on the bus for another half hour.

In the evening after dinner we had the Midyear Conference proper. We got status updates on all the grantees’ research projects, and we ETA’s presented on our experiences thus far. Some of these research projects are really fascinating, and I had a great time listening to everyone. I felt the same thing as the last time I met many of these scholars at Orientation, that I miss academia: the research, the people, and the stimulation. ^^

Day 2: Taroko National Park

The Taroko National Park (with a beautiful website worth reloading over and over) is one of Taiwan’s six National Parks. Taroko is named after the Taroko people (“truku” in their language, Seediq, the other Atayalic language¹). It is a mountainous region a main river and its thirteen tributaries, with rich ecosystems. Hualien is known for its stone exports and Taroko also is quite rocky. That said, the photos speak for themselves. ^^

Ah, Fulbright fraternity. ^^ We had lunch at the Grand Formosa hotel up in Taroko. More camaraderie ensued. ^^

After lunch many of us walked over to the Buddhist temple across the river. The sky which had stayed overcast for most of the day actually was sunny for this one hour window or so, resulting in gorgeous photos. I also got to have Erik fill me in on a number of temple-related subjects, including who Dizang (地蔵, じぞう, in gold below) actually was. The white bodhisattva is Guan Yin (観音, かんのん). There was also a beautiful pagoda.

Again, they’re Buddhists, not Nazis. Finally, here’s a scene from Myst VI: Buddhist Temple:

In the afternoon we took an hour and half hike along one of the many trails in the park. Many of the trails require some sort of permit, even with a tour guide, but this was one of the open ones. At one point I found a bunch of white shells along the trail—odd, as the trail was a good ten feet away and five feet above the river.

There was a bridge right outside the trail with some cute stone lions.

A couple of them looked just like me!

At night, a number of us walked out toward Hualien downtown, which was about a 30 minute walk from the hotel. We checked out their pretty big and hip night market, and I was amazed by how large the city felt, and how many young people I saw (sorry, no pictures). Maybe it’s just where I live now, where the people my age are either out in another city at school or already married, but it’s really refreshing to see people my age.

Day 3: Hualien: American streets, rocks, martial law, and cheerleaders²

Hualien is a beautiful city, one of the largest on the east coast (larger than Yilan or Luodong), known for its jade and mochi (麻糬 in Taiwan, pronounced in Taiwanese, like mwájǐ or something like that—don’t ask me for Pe̍h-ōe-jī.) This morning one of the grad student researchers Katie and I took a walk. Our first stop was a nearby museum with a strange rock (奇石) collection, including the head of Lee Teng-hui, and an outdoor sculpture park.

Right behind it was a pillbox on the hill above the ocean, a relic of Taiwan under Martial Law. Note that the pillbox is pointed at the city, not at the ocean.

As we walked around, we saw some old run down Japanese houses, and then ran into some cheerleaders. We were totally confused as to what was going on, but it was apparently some sort of fire department demonstration/show for kids, and that was some supplemental entertainment.

We then walked down to the Pine Garden (松園別館), a café, art and concert venue, which originally was a Japanese government building. The lore says that this was where Japanese soldiers were given their sending-off sake before going on their kamikaze missions, some of which left from Hualien. It seemed like a beautiful little venue, and had some cool decorations on a few of their windows.

There were also some trees with IV’s in them. Apparently they’re pesticides.

Something I was amazed at how American the streetscapes felt. Walking down their sidewalks (!) along their wide streets, it just felt like the geography of a spread-out, hilly Midwestern city. They even have English on the post boxes (sort of). Not quite rows and rows of houses with the windows painted blue, but very American nonetheless—it was oddly both comforting and disconcerting. ^^ I’m sure there’s even more in Hualien still worth checking out and as it’s so close from where I live, I’m sure I’ll be back again.

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Tags: art, Atayal culture, Atayal language, Buddhism, conference, Engrish, firefighters, food, Fulbright, museum, photo, Taiwan, temple

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This entry was posted on 水曜日, 1 月 23rd, 2008 at 2:27 pm and is filed under travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.