Dining out in Neiwan seems to be an indispensable part of any package tour. Restaurants in the village offer more or less the same kind of cuisine. Typical Hakka fare often features wild chicken meat with orange sauce, pig intestines fried with ginger and assorted fried vegetables.
A village landmark is the Neiwan cinema. In the 1940s and 1950s it used to be the local entertainment center and played movies for nearby miners. When TV sets began to appear in the communities in the 1960s, the cinema had to replace the movie with striptease shows to survive. And when the striptease acts no longer attracted enough customers, the cinema had to close.
Another place to see tung blossoms and other activities is Paoshan Reservoir (
The flourishing of the tung tree, also known as the tung oil tree bearing the academic name of aluerites fordii hemi, in the mountain regions in northern Taiwan was described as a "beautiful fallacy" made decades ago.
With a view to cashing in on the thriving demand for wooden furniture materials to be exported to Japan, farmers in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli areas started planting wutung trees (firmiana simplex, commonly named Chinese parasol tree) in the 1960s. But the difficulty in growing wutung trees later forced many farmers to switch to tung trees, which are much easier to take care of. Both trees trace their roots to Yangtze River area in China.
After the Japanese customers discovered the wood was of the wrong kind and stopped purchases from local suppliers, the tung oil trees were left uncut.
Three decades later, those trees are flourishing with profuse blossoms in spring and have become a major tourist attraction in the Taoyuan-Hsinchu-Miaoli area.
The trees can still be used for carving, furniture and wood pulp. The oil extracted from the seeds was used as a key ingredient for varnish and it remains a must for Hakka people who produce hand-made umbrellas with oil paper.
On the Web: http//www.hakka.gov.tw
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