day 2, alishan mountain

I thought everybody would agree, after long hours' drive any place with such greenery like Alishan mountain is a definite welcome, especially when the morning sun was shining brightly while the breeze blowing so gentle and refreshing. (During my last trip, Alishan was a disaster, after the drama and in downpour. ) The local guide arranged for us a van for the whole group to pick all us up from the entrance. No matter how hard both of us repeated that the ride was only five minutes long and gentlemen offer seats to ladies, still my group turned deaf ears to us, when the van appeared, they just ambushed it and got ready to fight for their valuable seats.

Anyway, we were in the middle of the mountain. So immediately some group members already concluded that Alishan is so so, and not comparable to mountains back home. I smiled and pretended to agree, thinking our world really need eyes to find and appreciate beauty. Our guide, smartly organized a route to avoid most groups and led us to explore the green world.

One of its great wonders are huge trees, mostly cypress, red texture and giving off refreshing mint-like smell. Some of them are over 2000 years old. And when Taiwan was Japan's colony for 50 years, logging of Cypress and other hard timber was a very developed industry. The Japanese even feared their exploitative chopping would irritate the spirits of woods and even built a stupa to pacify the possible angry god. And some trees are really die hard, and on the chopped trunks new branches survived and grew, hence 'tree of three generations'.
a over-2000-year-old Cypress


stupa to spirit of forest

three generations tree
We had lunch at a nice restaurant around 12 and afterward we left the place and sipped some nice Oolong tea in the half way. People from our area, already spoiled by our fine quality green and white teas, didn't like stronger taste of Oolong.

So we hurried off in the direction of Kaosiung, the second largest city in Taiwan. On the way, the guide played some movies about Zhang Xueliang, Madame Chiang. Because large percentage of stories on these documentary were fresh and untold before to us so we enjoyed them very much .We drove through the streets of Kausiung around the sunset time and we directly went to the English embassy just off the harbor. It was weekend and there were lots of locals there too, enjoying the sunset from the hilltop.

In Taiwan, very frequently we came to bulletin and staff, criticizing the evil of the Communist Party on mainland, and eulogize the good of Falungong, regarded as a evil cult on mainland. Some men, especially showed great interest in these and fortunately they remained calm when approached by those preachers.

light house in the distance

Kaohsiung harbour