Stumbling into a Hakka enclave

As the sun lowered itself behind the limestone hills that surround Meinung, turning the rice paddies into shimmering mosaics of fluorescent green and silver and rimming the lingering charcoal-colored storm clouds in gold, the only thing left to do was to step off my bike and gaze absently at the landscape. I needed something, anything, to help take my mind off the pain being inflicted on my hindquarters by the marble-hard saddle of my rental bike and the idyllic rural scene was doing a good job at that.

Birds flitted in pairs through the rain-washed air, while directly before me a couple of elderly farmers waist-deep in water harvested the last of a pond's lotus roots.

Massaging myself, I concluded that -- in the grand scheme of things -- the pain was a small price to pay for this type of up-close and leisurely exploration of one of Taiwan's unique communities.

Hakka central

Meinung lies in a broad, flat valley recessed into the foothills of Kaohsiung County and is a major center of Taiwan's Hakka community. Portions of Hsinchu and Miaoli counties also host significant Hakka communities that historically maintained close links with Meinung as clans migrated north and south searching for productive farming land. But migration now is mostly by the younger generation in the direction of Kaohsiung and Taipei.

Too far from the southern metropolis to serve as a commuter town and with its dominant Hakka population being traditionally resistant to Han Chinese incursions, the town has maintained a pleasant scale and retained much of its original architecture and cultural flair.

With the young generation conspicuously absent, sleepy Meinung bears the distinct feel of an agricultural retirement community, or an open-air museum tended by the town's remaining residents.

This convergence of local traits puts Meinung near the top of the list for favorite domestic travel destinations and the pressure of the town's popularity can make itself felt on holidays, when crowds descend upon the town.

At this season, however, Meinung and the surrounding area's wealth of historical sites are virtually empty and the roads, being flat and in my experience free of delivery trucks, were a joy to pedal unhurriedly for an afternoon, the pain in my backside notwithstanding.

Loopy in Meinung

It may be a stroke of wild luck, but amazingly Meinung's most noteworthy sites lie evenly spaced along a fairly smooth circular line that loops along its northern edge and then swings back through the southern and eastern sections of the town.

Using the cardinal points for orientation, though, may give the impression of considerable distance, when in fact, each stepping-off point is practically within view of the next.

From the long-distance bus stop downtown, where most of the bike rental stores are located, it's a straight shot east to Zhongzheng Lake, which is rimmed by majestic palm trees and enjoys a dramatic backdrop of the area's hills. Most tourists make a bee-line for the pagoda on the lake.

Where they go after that is a mystery, because it's certainly not the Meinung Hakkas Museum (美濃文物館) located on the lake's eastern shore and open since 2001. The place at midday had no more than a dozen visitors and a check on its Web site this week showed I was the 732nd person to log on.

This small, but handsomely designed museum contains fascinating exhibits on the settlement of the area by Hakka people and detailed descriptions (in Chinese only) of their unique lifestyle, as well as agricultural technologies, clothing and art. The best part by far is the section on Hakka music, especially the tunes sung by men and women in a game of call and response while they worked in adjacent fields.