County Route 200 winds its way across the southern tip of Taiwan from the walled Ching dynasty outpost of Hengchuen (燴春) over to Manchou (滿州), which might be one of the lushest, greenest valleys anywhere in the world. For most of those four or five kilometers, the road tracks the Dongmen Stream (東門溪), whose bed is dry in the dry season and floods in the wet season. At one spot on the stream's southern bank, and atop a rise of low dirt cliffs, flames shoot out of the ground.
Not big flames. Little flames. They dance up from the rocks and gravel that people have piled there over the last few decades to catch the heat. Most of the flames burn orange and don't dance more than 5cm or 10cm off the ground. A few are blue and simply flicker in pits between the stones.
That's what Chuhuo (出火), as the place is named, was like when I first stumbled across it late one evening two years ago. It was dark and there was fire shooting up from the very ground I walked upon. All I could do was marvel, first at the phenomenon and then at the fact that no one seemed to celebrate it. There were no signs and no people. Just a dirt path down to this amazing fairy blaze, which seemed to burn eternally on a dusty riverbank. Of course I'd been told that natural gas seeping up from under the ground was responsible for the whole thing, but that didn't make it any less weird. Nonplussed, I stooped down, lit a cigarette and stared at it for a while.
PHOTO: DAVID FRAZIER, TAIPEI TIMES
Since then, the area has changed a little. The Kenting National Park, which in 1997 bought Chuhuo and the land surrounding it, has fixed up the site for the benefit of both tourists and area residents. They've added a small gravel parking lot off the main road, a flight of wooden stairs down to the riverbank, a paved walk to the flames and a knee-high stone fence that encircles the fire.
On repeat visits, I've also discovered that Pingtung County residents are frequent visitors to Chuhuo and have their own uses for the natural wonder. They generally come a little before dusk and then stay until a little after dark. They bring sausages, meat, eggs, vegetables, skewers and grills. One local business owner, Roland Chu, explained this phenomenon by saying, "Where there's fire, Chinese people like to barbecue."
As a barbecue pit, Chuhuo is generally busiest on weekends. Last Tuesday however, a handful of people still came for the natural burners and a sunset that left water buffalo silhouetted against the sky.
PHOTO: DAVID FRAZIER, TAIPEI TIMES
One of them was Wu Yi-ling (吳伊齡), a local tourism industry worker. She was there with her friend, Ms. Chen, some popcorn, aluminum foil and 18 sweet potatoes. "Have you tried these before," Wu asked, indicating the sweet potatoes she was wrapping in aluminum foil. In Pingtung, it's generally just about that easy to get invited to a barbecue.
John Shen (沉恆榮), who grew up along Route 200 before it was Route 200 and walked passed Chuhuo every day on his way to elementary school, said people have cooked over Chuhuo's natural gas stove since at least the Japanese occupation. At least that's what the older generation told him as a kid.
Of his own childhood in the 1950s and 1960s, he recalls, "Everyday when we walked home from school, we would always stop there, because there were always people hanging around, cooking something and having a good time. Also, the clay in the riverbed was very sticky and very special. We would use it to make some pottery, then we would bake it for a day or two in the fire."
PHOTO: DAVID FRAZIER, TAIPEI TIMES
Natural gas blowhole
Now 53, Shen is the senior interpreter at Kenting National Park, where he also serves as a sort of local historian and naturalist. "When Hengchuen was built up by the Ching dynasty in 1876," he said, "there was more ground fire than now. There were at least five spots, but they have changed several times."
Pointing to a map, he showed some of the various points at which flames have shot from the ground between Hengchuen and Manchou along the Dongmen Stream. The shifts were likely due to seismic activity, he said, as the bed of the Dongmen Stream coincides with a local fault line.
PHOTO: DAVID FRAZIER, TAIPEI TIMES
The ground in the area is composed of mudstone, which is generally full of cracks and fissures. The fractures in the rock provide routes for the natural gas to seep up through the stone.
The gas ignites at the surface because it is heated to high temperatures while still deep in the ground. When it is finally emitted, it is hot enough to ignite spontaneously. "At Yellowstone [National Park in the US], they have similar underground heat," said Shen. "There it heats water and produces geysers. Here it heats natural gas."
In the rainy season, which covers the summer and fall months, the flames occasionally go out. Though heavy downpours cannot extinguish the flames, they can block the passages through which the gas escapes.
PHOTO: DAVID FRAZIER, TAIPEI TIMES
Historically, Shen said that many residents in the Hengchuen area were wary of the mysterious fires and held various superstitions about the Chuhuo region. "The flames coming out of the ground was very strange, especially when they moved, and they attributed it to spirits. However, a danger that was even more real in the 19th century for the Chinese settlers was the Paiwan Aboriginal tribe, who lived in the mountainous interior up along the Dongmen Stream. Sometimes people were attacked and killed there. There were also battles between the Chinese and the Aborigines. Because a lot of people died there, people were afraid the area was full of ghosts."
Now, however, the local population seems to be more or less scientifically enlightened, treating such ghosts stories as only so much nonsense. Mr. Zheng , a leathery old man who sits in the parking lot and sells ice cream by day and barbecue supplies by night, burst out laughing at first mention of my ghost hypothesis. "Good lord! Where did you get that idea?" he asked. "Read the sign! The fire here comes from natural gas!"
The last time Chuhuo shifted -- bringing it to its present location -- was in the 1960s after the China Petroleum Corporation (CPC) spent three years testing and drilling for natural gas in the area. Lu Ming-de (呂明德) of the CPC's exploration unit wasn't around for that prospecting mission between 1964 and 1967, but he was willing to say a few things about it. "Anywhere we detect seepage in Taiwan, we'll explore," he said. "But there needs to be tens of millions of cubic meters for it to be economical."
At present, the major natural gas deposits exploited by China Petroleum are in Hsinchu (新竹) and Miaoli (苗栗). "At Chuhuo," said Lu, "the amount of natural gas was too small, so the project was abandoned."
That's just fine with local residents, who are happy to see Chuhuo under the national park's control. After all, a pipeline operation could only ruin Taiwan's only no-effort, no-clean-up barbecue.
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