One of the joys of travel, supposedly, is allowing yourself to be surprised and the first shock I got upon disembarking the express train to Sanyi in Miaoli County was hearing that there were no local trains to Shenghsing, a village that in my atlas was located only a few kilometers further south and which quite plainly had an icon indicating a train station.
With no more elaborate an explanation as to why there is no train to Shenghsing than a gruff, "There's no train to Shenghsing" from the station agent, it became obvious that I'd need to find alternative transport to reach the village.
Taxis in Sanyi can be hailed by calling the phone numbers spray-painted on walls outside the station and there are buses that run between the two towns, but since the former tend to be expensive and the latter are few and far between, hoofing it on foot seemed as good an option as any. And besides, the route between Sanyi and Shenghsing is highlighted in the guide to the ongoing Hakka Tung Flower Festival as one of the event's 21 scenic routes where the white tung flowers that have fallen from groves of tung trees carpet the road "like summer snow." It sounded nice, but then a lot of things in brochures sound nice.
It turned out that the village of Shenghsing and the narrow country road that I would have to walk to get there would be two more surprises, though strictly of the pleasant variety.
Hakka and the tung flower
Shenghsing lies at the mid-point of a 10km semi-circular route that begins at Sanyi, veers into the hills and pops out at the North Number 2 Highway just beyond the Lung Teng Broken Bridge, which dates to the Japanese occupation and became broken in a devastating earthquake in 1935.
About 20 minutes out of Sanyi, the road climbs into a lush forest and for the next hour (when walking) passes under dense sections of tung trees which were in full bloom this week and by next week should have the ground covered with the "summer snow" promised by the festival's organizers.
To be honest, the tung flower, while undeniably quite beautiful, is no more so than most other flowers, nor is it especially fragrant, which could make its elevation to the central part of a four-week festival somewhat specious were it not for its integral role in the history of Hakka settlement in the low mountains along the island's west coast.
Until the middle of the last century, Hakka communities faced a literal and figurative uphill struggle to establish themselves, sandwiched as they were between hostile Minnan and Aborigine groups. So to supplement their meager incomes derived from the small-scale agricultural plots they could clear in the mountains, wood from tung trees was used in the production of items like matches, toothpicks, bento boxes, sandals and furniture, while oil extracted from the flower's buds became the base ingredient in a widely sold water-resistant varnish.
As a key to the communities' economic survival, the flower is held dearly by many Hakkanese as a symbol of their difficult history in Taiwan.
All the products from tung wood and flowers have long since been replaced by more economical alternatives, but the trees in the meantime have flourished to the point where whole sections of forest in this season turn a white that looks like, well, snow.
The Council for Hakka Affairs has then seized upon the flower's blooming season as an opportunity to showcase Hakka culture and give tourists one more reason to head for the hills on their days off. If one really needs an excuse to get out into the country, seeing the tung flower in genuine Hakka communities is as good as any other.
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