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.
PHOTOS: MAX WOODWORTH, TAIPEI TIMES
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.
PHOTO: MAX WOODWORTH, TAIPEI TIMES
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.
Stumbling into Shenghsing
It's in the shade of the tung trees that the road from Sanyi meanders, punctuated by the occasional
panorama of the surrounding countryside. The fresh air, the stiff breeze for which Miaoli County is known and the almost complete absence of other people are heavenly, and turning the corner into Shenghsing was one of those rare happy shocks when traveling.
The village is no more than a jumble of maybe a dozen old houses set in a small depression in the hills, but the elaborate, spanking-new patios with families looking debonair at tables in the shadow of a tung tree announced that I had stumbled into a prime tourist destination. Shenghsing, however, is on a tiny scale that makes it far more charming than other tourist hot-spots such as Jiufen or Neiwan that lost their charm long ago with the arrival of the millionth tour bus.
Here is a truly picturesque tourist village without the blaring car horns, the sausage stands, the cheap plastic toy vendors, and best of all, with very few people.
As far as attractions go, Shenghsing seems to make little pretense of having many. And that's just fine. It seemed enough that the village enjoys a fortunate location in a sunny notch, an elevation (402m) that takes the bite out of the mid-day sun and a quaint train station, where the man behind the ticket window didn't seem to mind the fact that children were crossing the tracks freely, even sitting on them eating snacks.
Many of the houses appear to have been lovingly renovated and preserved by the unusually radiant and cheery locals who have clearly seized on the cachet of their historic town. It felt as though I'd happened upon the village that mass tourism had spared.
The private parking lots on the edge of the village, with their specter of weekend crowds, set off alarm bells, but on Thursday, the village was practically empty and prime seats in the tea houses overlooking the train station just beckoned to be sat in for the remainder of the day. Which I did, drinking the local specialty leicha -- a fiber-rich mixture of ground tea leaves, peanuts, sesame seeds, soy beans, red beans, green beans, pearl-barley, lotus seed and euryale seed -- and listening to the town's affable tour guide Chiu Wen-shan (
He's the one who told me that the last train to run through Shenhsing was at 9pm on Oct. 23, 1998 (my atlas was published in 1997), which explained the relaxed demeanor of the station agent watching kids play on the tracks, and it also said something about the attraction of the village as the small tourist site it had obviously become.
The village used to be the highest point on the eastern mountain line and the single track that could be carved into the valley caused regular delays in transport and passenger trains. To alleviate the problem, a 7.7km tunnel, one of the longest in Taiwan, was bored into the hills outside Sanyi opening a new route that cut off Shenghsing from the train line.
"Until the train line closed, Shenghsing wasn't a tourist destination. Actually it was an annoyance because it was a bottleneck for trains passing through," Chiu said. "Now, the rail line is closed and the place has assumed this historic atmosphere that everyone likes. And it's relatively untouched." Now, with growing curiosity in Taiwan's history and the aggressive development of the domestic tourist industry to counter-balance the economic effects of the implementation of the two-day weekend, Shenghsing, like other more celebrated traditional rural communities, is thriving off what one might call nostalgia tourism.
But it's a small boom, contained by the physical limitations of the village -- the divet in the hills where the village rests simply isn't big enough to fit much more development. And thank God for that. The town does, indeed, seem blessed.
A big boost
The tourism industry is really what the Hakka Tung Flower Festival aims to boost and this year the festival has grown to include 32 townships in six counties offering 600 different activities over its four-week period.
Visitors can take in Hakka music concerts, learn pottery, eat specialty foods, listen to Hakka story telling and basically join in a staggering array of other cultural activities, most of which are entirely free -- and, unless your Hakkanese is up to snuff, utterly incomprehensible. But in settings like Shenghsing that shouldn't matter much.
At least it didn't bother me after a hearty dinner crowned by Hakkanese fatty pork, stewed bamboo root and chicken soup at the Shenghsing Inn (
I took note of the food as yet another pleasant surprise and wondered about the impact a proposed tourist steam train from Sanyi to Shenghsing would have on the village. For one thing, if the rail line were re-opened I wouldn't have to replace my old atlas. But it may not be the quiet village that the throngs overlooked for long.
A note about the Hakka Tung Flower Festival
The Hakka Tung Flower Festival began April 17 and continues until May 16. The 600 events that make up the festival take place almost round the clock in 32 townships in Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Taichung and Nantou Counties.
Twenty-one scenic routes have been drawn up by the Council for Hakka Affairs and its co-sponsor in the event, Uni-President, that follow country roads through hills heavily forested with tung trees, which in the central and southern counties are currently in bloom and which are expected to bloom this week in Taipei and Taoyuan Counties.
For more detailed information on the routes, and a listing of the festival's related events, free 72-page
brochures are available at any 7-11 store. Brochures are
entirely in Chinese. For more information in Chinese and limited information in English, check http://www.hakka.gov.tw.
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