Before getting starting yet another busy week, last Sunday I took myself on a little adventure to the Treasure Hill Artist Village (寶藏巖藝術村）near Gongguan. The village was originally an illegal settlement founded by KMT military veterans, and later became a sustainable urban living community. Now it is being used mainly as an artist village, and individual artists have open galleries that visitors can wander in to. A lot of the houses were built by former residents, and there is a lot of plant life as well as a community garden. Its truly a beautiful, quiet refuge in the middle ofthe big city! It also overlooks the Xindian River and is up on a little hill so has wonderful views. I definitely hope to go back there before leaving in a couple of weeks!
View from Treasure Hill
Treasure Hill Artist’s Drawings of Buildings Throughout Taipei
Despite the fact that our final exams were coming up on the following Tuesday, I decided to plan a rather last minute trip to Hualian with a friend and another ICLP student. We booked a hostel and Tai tie 台鐵 tickets, and took a risk in terms of our exam grades! The planning also included having to remit money to the hostel in order to allow for a later check in. Don’t judge, but performing a successful bank transaction in Mandarin was extremely exciting for me haha! The whole thing turned out to be completely worth it though, not too surprisingly. Hualian is a small city about halfway down the east coast of Taiwan. It’s also near the beginning of Taroko National park which encompasses Taroko Gorge, a massive gorge created by the Liwu River 立霧溪。 The park and gorge are named after the Taroko/Truku people, the Indigenous tribe which lives in the area.
After heading out Friday evening to our hostel, we woke up bright and early to catch an hour and a half bus to the park. We walked the Swallow Grotto (燕子口）trail, and then headed further west into the park to the Baiyang trail as well as the waterfall cave at the end (白揚步道和白楊步道水簾洞）。Some notable events included seeing a monkey in real life in the wild! Actually it was a Formosan Macaque (台灣獼猴) , to be specific. This was actually a bucket list item for me on this trip but I had kind of forgotten about it, and felt really lucky that it let itself be seen! I also saw two of what I think are Masked Palm Civets, but sadly didn’t get a picture or video. I had never heard of a Civet before! Secondly, we got to go into the waterfall cave at the end of the Baiyang trail, and even though we didn’t realize we probably should have bought disposable plastic ponchos, a kind little girl and her mom handed theirs off to us. Unlike the ocean, the mountain stream water was freezing but incredibly refreshing after a long hike!
Swallow Grotto // 燕子口
立霧溪/太魯閣 Liwu River and Taroko Gorge!
Lastly, after having a small crisis about busses and whether we would ever be able to get back to the hostel (technology is your friend until very suddenly you can’t trust her!), we were able to visit the 長春祠 (Everlasting Spring Shrine) which is a beautiful shrine dedicated to the workmen killed while building the Central Cross-Island Highway. It was definitely a good example of 天人合一觀念！
長春祠 // Everlasting Spring Shrine (apologies for the poor image quality ;__;)
That night we checked out Hualian’s 東大門夜市 (Dongdamen Night Market) and tried a couple of new foods including tofu french fries (which turned out to be quite similar to choudoufu) and the highlight for me, bamboo rice (rice cooked in a piece of bamboo) paired with wild boar. The last two come from Indigenous Taiwanese cuisine, and the boar is sautéed with onion, garlic, and spices including 刺蔥 (prickly ash) which is a native plant often used in Indigenous Taiwanese cuisine. It actually has tiny thorns on it! The flavor was fresh and herby, and paired excellently with the boar and onions.
Wild Boar and Bamboo Rice! 😛
After another 3 hour train ride aka exam study session we made it back to Taipei safe and sound, ready to face midterms on Tuesday!