By virtue of its picturesque mountains alone, Meinung (美濃) township is worth a visit. Shortly after arriving on a warm summer afternoon, I watched the clouds and mist roll in and shroud the peaks, constantly shifting with the whims of a moody storm. It looked like a slide show of Chinese landscape paintings. By sunset, the skies cleared into hues of pinks and blue, leaving just enough time for a leisurely bicycle ride.
Provided there’s good weather, bicycling remains the best way to explore this popular traditional Hakka town. Most of the historical sites downtown can easily be covered within a day or two. Pleasing sites include the East Gate (東門樓) and Zhongzheng Lake (中正胡), which die-hard Meinung residents refer to as Meinung Lake (美濃胡).
Meinung has a set of color-coded bike paths that take you through many of its smaller roads. Though some of the lines aren’t very clearly marked, don’t worry about getting lost — the mountains should keep you oriented, or listen for the sound of cars to get back on to the main road.
Part of the fun, however, can be losing your way, as you soak in the sights of rice paddies, palm trees and running brooks. You’ll catch an occasional whiff of manure (you’re in the country after all) or the sweet smell of flowering betel nut trees. As you ride, look out for the kaiji bogung (開基伯公), or roadside altars, which look like headstones.
I stayed at the Home Inn (湖美茵), a genial guesthouse at the western end of town. The area offers a generous view of the mountains, which you can enjoy while sitting on a bench in front of a large pond. If you walk around the surrounding gardens, you’re bound to run into the inn’s pet geese, which seem to only be concerned with chasing each other.
A room for two runs NT$1,800 on weekdays and NT$2,100 on weekends, which may seem a little steep for the budget-minded, but the rooms are very well-kept and the grounds are scenic enough that you could spend the whole day sitting outside, lost in a book. The proprietor (and one of the leaders of the anti-dam movement), Sung Yung-sung (宋永松), comes out occasionally with a pitcher of cold, fresh mint tea, made from freshly picked sprigs of the herb. Otherwise you’re pretty much left alone; weekdays are especially quiet.
With its spacious grounds and large dining facilities, the Home Inn also accommodates small gatherings, with catered meals available on request.
Getting there is a little tricky, though — you’ll have to either drive or rent a bicycle by the bus station in downtown Meinung. It’s a 15-minute ride on a bicycle.
And thanks to the High Speed Rail, you can leave Taipei City in the morning and find yourself pedaling through rural southern Taiwan by the early afternoon.
PLACES TO STAY: » Home Inn (湖美茵) 52, Ln 782, Zhongshan Rd Sec 2, Meinung Township, Kaohsiung County (高雄縣美濃鎮中山路二段782巷52號) Rooms range from NT$1,800 to NT$3,200 For more information, call (07) 681-7828 On the Net: blog.yam.com/homeinn Jhong-Jheng Lake B&B (中正湖山莊民宿) 30 Fumei Rd, Zhongzhen Borough, Meinung Township, Kaohsiung County (高雄縣美濃鎮中圳里福美路30號) Rooms range from NT$1,500 to NT$3,500 For more information, call (07) 681-2736 On the Net: www.5658.com.tw/zzhu
Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire, says our gut is a “complex machine.” “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” Verma says. “In a general gastroenterology clinic, the most common conditions we see are irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease, inflammatory bowel disease and constipation,” says Nisha
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
Last week US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would speak on the phone to the President of Taiwan. “l’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody. We have that situation very well in hand,” Trump said. This marked the second time in a couple of weeks he had said he would talk to the President of Taiwan. In 2016 he famously took a call from then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), when he was president-elect. Despite warnings that the apocalypse was nigh because of a phone call, the world quickly forgot about the conversation between two democratically-elected presidents.
May 25 to May 31 Few believed that apples could be cultivated on a commercial scale in Taiwan’s high mountains. When horticulturalist Cheng Chao-hsiung (程兆熊) first proposed the idea in 1955, both American and Taiwanese colleagues dismissed it as implausible, arguing that temperate fruit could not be reliably grown on a subtropical island, especially on rugged terrain. However, it was this terrain in the Central Mountain Range where many Chinese Civil War veterans were resettled in the late 1950s. With limited job prospects and no family in Taiwan, they were placed on cooperative farms aimed toward self-sufficiency. Some say the conditions
RSS