The Taiwan Thousand Miles Trail Association on Saturday in Taipei recognized selected honorary “eco-craft trail masters”, with bamboo bridges, cobblestone trails and stone weirs highlighted this year.
The awards were established by the association in 2018 to help preserve the time-honored craft of hand-laid trails.
Kuo Shou-fa (郭守發) won the award this year for creating bow bridges and gazebos in the Shibi (石壁) area of Yunlin County’s Gukeng Township (古坑), drawing on local Moso bamboo resources.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Thousand Miles Trail Association
A judge said that most eco-craft trails use stones or shale to build bridges, but building stones are not easily available.
Timber is an alternative, but not durable enough to withstand the humidity in mountainous areas in the long-term, they said.
Moso bamboo grows fast and is naturally abundant in Shibi, the judge said, adding that it is also much more durable than timber, making it an ideal material for building bridges in the township.
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Lo Wan-chen (羅萬真), another award recipient, also leveraged a local resource — cobblestones — to maintain local trails.
His family has lived near the Tiao Tan Ancient Trail (挑炭古道) in Miaoli County’s Sanyi Township (三義) for three generations.
A judge said the base of the Huoyan Mountain (火炎山) in Sanyi abounds with cobblestones.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Thousand Miles Trail Association
Cobblestones are widely distributed in northern Taiwan from Sanyi Township to the Taoyuan tableland, the judges said, adding that excess cobbles must be used or removed to keep farmland arable and are often applied to buildings or retaining walls.
Lo said he often carried charcoal and lemongrass along the Tiao Tan Ancient Trail when he was little.
“As a child, I used to follow the elders into the trail with a hoe or a brush knife in hand to mend collapsed areas and clear overgrown grass,” he said. “We did not feel like we were repairing the trail at the time. It was our life.”
The Taoyuan Stone Tidal Weirs Association also received an award for their dedication to maintaining the stone weirs paved across the intertidal zone of Kejian Village (蚵間) in Taoyuan’s Sinwu District (新屋).
The stone weirs are not just a fishing tool, but have lots of pores allowing intertidal species to inhabit the area, the association said.
People can walk on the weirs toward the ocean while enjoying the seascape, it said.
There are tens of thousands of stone weirs spread across more than 30 countries, and Taiwan has about 650 stone weirs, with 11 of them in Sinwu District, a judge said.
While many stone weirs in other countries have become archaeological sites with thousands of years of history, those in Sinwu continue to sustain locals’ livelihoods, they said.
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