The Pingxi Branch Railway Line has been a favorite stomping ground of mine for many years, providing many happy days of hiking and exploring. Judging from the huge crowds that now shuffle each day along the quaint main street of its biggest draw, Shifen Township (十分) in New Taipei City, it’s hard to believe there’s anywhere in the area that hasn’t been discovered by the masses. Indeed, the days when some of the finest hikes in the area — such as the wonderful Sandiaoling Waterfall Walk (三貂嶺瀑布步道) — were relatively quiet escapes are long gone.
Since this is Taiwan, however, new and exciting places to discover can be found even in the most popular areas. And several little-known beauties languish within a stone’s throw of Shifen railway station, almost unknown to this day.
In fact one of the finest natural wonders in the Shifen area was, until a year or two ago, a real pain to get to, and thus virtually unknown. This is the Nanshanping Bat Cave (南山坪蝙蝠洞). It lies just a few hundred meters from the nearest road, yet the great cave is extremely well concealed by the dense jungle, and before the new trail was cut by a local hiking club in 2016, getting there was a short but difficult adventure only suitable for experienced hikers.
Photo: Richard Saunders
It doesn’t help that to this day the cave (or rather caves, for there are in fact two), is described in only a couple of online sources, and the only printed hiking map of the area marks it a kilometer west of its actual position. No wonder it remains so little known.
TRAILHEAD TO CAVE
The trailhead is easy enough to find, if you know where to look. Get off bus 795 at Fude Temple (福德宮站), two stops before Shifen village. Just off the road is a colorful Land God shrine. Walk through the metal temple gate and along the tarmac road next to the shrine.
Photo: Richard Saunders
In a couple of minutes, the narrow road bends round to the right to end at an old brick farmhouse. On the left at the bend is a stream, culverted through an overgrown concrete channel with faux bamboo handrails. Follow an indistinct dirt trail along the right bank of the channel, and after a few meters it winds gently upwards into a grove of conifers.
Look out for the carcasses of sky lanterns which litter the woods, and, if you intend to come back the same way, consider taking a few of them back to the village and dumping them in the trash.
The path soon follows a small stream through the woods. Note the junction a little further on. The trail climbing the hillside on the left is the way up to the upper bat cave. Keep ahead along the path beside the stream, and at a second junction, turn left, down a slippery and rough dirt trail that crosses the little watercourse and then climbs the hillside opposite for a couple of minutes until the huge, gaping mouth of the cave yawns out of the arboreal gloom above.
Photo: Richard Saunders
According to a local I met near the trailhead after my first visit to the cave, it was used during the World War II as an air raid shelter. If so, access must have been easier in those days.
It’s a very impressive sight, even though (like most of Taiwan’s so-called “caves”) it’s more of a very deep overhang than a true cave. Sadly, if there were ever any bats inside, they seem to have fled — probably the cave isn’t quite dark enough for their tastes and they’ve found deeper, darker places to make their home in the many abandoned coal mine shafts that dot the area’s forested mountainsides.
You will, however, find bats in the second bat cave (and it’s a real cave) concealed in the face of the steep, wooded hillside above. Retrace steps to the first junction, turn left, and follow the dirt trail steeply uphill for about 15 minutes.
Photo: Richard Saunders
The cave entrance is far less impressive than the gaping mouth of the lower one, but go inside and the cave opens out quite a bit. Just enough light gets into the cave to illuminate the interior enough to dimly see its size, although to see the bats sleeping in the roof you’ll need to use a flashlight or head torch. If you do, be sensible and don’t shine it directly on them — the poor things are trying to sleep after all.
BACK TO SHIFEN
Above the upper Bat Cave the trail becomes steeper still, and it’s a tough climb for nearly 30 minutes to the conspicuous knife-edge ridge above Shifen village. Here the trail swings left along a precariously narrow blade of rock before dropping down to the highway just south of Shifen village after about an hour. Don’t even think of taking this trail unless you’re an experienced hiker and have good-quality walking shoes and good weather conditions.
Photo: Richard Saunders
Turn left down the wide new highway, and it’s only a 15 minutes walk back to the packed streets of Shifen. On the way, though, pay a quick visit to the wide, smooth waterslide at Shifen Gorge (十分谷), a curious and once relatively popular spot that seems to have been forgotten these days.
Almost opposite the Shifen train station, a large stream empties into the Keelung River. Take the overgrown stone trail up the left bank of this stream for about five minutes. In years past, the waterslide was a popular summer destination with locals, who brought along boards or tea trays and slid down this slippery, smooth chute into the large pool at its base. The trail up there is now extremely overgrown and boggy in places, but not a big obstacle to the determined, especially on a baking hot, sunny day.
Richard Saunders is a classical pianist and writer who has lived in Taiwan since 1993. He’s the founder of a local hiking group, Taipei Hikers, and is the author of six books about Taiwan, including Taiwan 101 and Taipei Escapes. Visit his Web site at www.taiwanoffthebeatentrack.com.
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
On Facebook a friend posted a dashcam video of a vehicle driving through the ash-colored wasteland of what was once Taroko Gorge. A crane appears in the video, and suddenly it becomes clear: the video is in color, not black and white. The magnitude 7.2 earthquake’s destruction on April 3 around and above Taroko and its reverberations across an area heavily dependent on tourism have largely vanished from the international press discussions as the news cycle moves on, but local residents still live with its consequences every day. For example, with the damage to the road corridors between Yilan and
May 13 to May 19 While Taiwanese were eligible to take the Qing Dynasty imperial exams starting from 1686, it took more than a century for a locally-registered scholar to pass the highest levels and become a jinshi (進士). In 1823, Hsinchu City resident Cheng Yung-hsi (鄭用錫) traveled to Beijing and accomplished the feat, returning home in great glory. There were technically three Taiwan residents who did it before Cheng, but two were born in China and remained registered in their birthplaces, while historians generally discount the third as he changed his residency back to Fujian Province right after the exams.
Few scenes are more representative of rural Taiwan than a mountain slope covered in row upon row of carefully manicured tea plants. Like staring at the raked sand in a Zen garden, seeing these natural features in an unnaturally perfect arrangement of parallel lines has a certain calming effect. Snapping photos of the tea plantations blanketing Taiwan’s mountain is a favorite activity among tourists but, unfortunately, the experience is often rather superficial. As these tea fields are part of working farms, it’s not usually possible to walk amongst them or sample the teas they are producing, much less understand how the