1
Spreading a map of Taiwan on a desk, all you see are several
meandering blue lines, drawn onto a two-dimensional mix of
green, yellow and brown tones: a somewhat spindle-shaped
island embraced by the vast expanse of the ocean. From a global
perspective, Taiwan is but a small dot at the edge of the huge
Eurasian landmass.
I still recall a Japanese motion picture I saw in my youth,
its name translated into Chinese as “How Japan Was Born.”
Combining a rich mythical imagination with historical and cultural
concepts, it was a monumental film interlacing the symbolism
of flowing magma spewed forth by Japan’s Mount Fuji with images of prehistoric beasts such as dinosaurs.
Sometimes I try to picture in my mind how ages ago the
island of Taiwan was born of the foaming waves. I wonder what
that must have looked like. Of course it couldn’t have been the
kind of instant transformation you can see in science fiction
movies; rather it took a very slow and drawn-out process to give
the island the shape and appearance it has today.
In my imagination, primeval Formosa appears as a spectacularly
colorful cartoon, a firework of infinite possibilities and
marvelous authenticity. Yet how could I, a man of our modern
times, a creature tamed by civilization, trace and visualize that
primordial state of long ago?
In the spring of 2002, another wood of giant Formosan
Hinokis was discovered, hidden up high in the depths of the
mountains. The breathtaking sight of those majestic trees provides
a glimpse of an older Taiwan before most of the land was
cultivated. If you take a stroll through the villages and townships
of Taiwan’s countryside, you will find a cornucopia of
place names that betray an ancient connection with water:
Chingshui (Clearwater), Lungchuan (Dragon Well), Shuitou
(Waterhead), Yungchuan (Gushing Spring), Changliu (Eternal
Flow) or Hsichou (River Islet). Although these places now look
no different from any other arid town, their natural water sources
having long since disappeared, yet their names still speak to us
of a Taiwan that once was, a place where flowing water was
found everywhere.
Small as Taiwan is, large parts of it are covered with hills,
terraces and soaring peaks. Many rivers originate in the slopes
and precipices of these mountain ranges. Exactly 129 are on
record, six of which are longer than 100km, and the largest of
them all is the Chuoshui River with a catchment area that extends across four counties: Nantou, Changhua, Yunlin and
Chiayi.
Compared to the big streams of many countries boasting a
much larger territory, the Chuoshui River is evidently not much
to brag about. But because of the precipitous nature of Taiwan’s
mountains which rise quickly to great heights, the rivers springing
from near their lofty ridges also cover a lot of altitude along
their short yet rapid and twisted courses through ragged terrain
down to sea level. Add to this the changeable climate typical for
maritime islands and what you get is Taiwan’s rich ecological
diversity. The vertical distribution of flora and fauna comprises
the tropical, subtropical and moderate zones at the lower altitudes
and the cold zone at the higher altitudes. It is as if from
the equatorial to the polar, all the planet’s different types of
ecospheres are packed into the small island of Taiwan.
Its numerous indigenous species of plants and animals
found nowhere else on earth, and the many lush landscapes
which are a source of justified pride, frequently elicit praise and
admiration from amazed biologists around the globe. As one of
them put it, “Taiwan is like a museum showing a cross section of
the world’s species.”
2
From the Pilu Mountain north of the Chilai Main Peak, the
Central Mountain Range stretches in a southwesterly direction
all the way to Nengkao Mountain, its lofty heights forming the
boundary between the counties of Nantou and Hualien. Nantou
County is the geographical center of Taiwan, the heartland from
which the island extends north and south, east and west. And if,
in addition to longitude and latitude, we look at the vertical and horizontal extension in three-dimensional space, with the xcoordinate
at sea-level and the y-coordinate rising skywards,
then the highest points on the y-axis, furthest removed from the
horizontal plane, fall on the boundary lines separating Nantou
from the counties of Yunlin, Chiayi and Hualien.
You could say that my wife and I have been constantly on
the go for an entire year, traveling far and wide on our
“exploratory tour” of Nantou. Only after we went out there to
walk the earth and experience its geographical features firsthand
did we understand that those simple-looking, abstract little lines
scattered across our map provide a huge challenge when you try
to actually “visit” all of them in the real world. The further we
went on our search for the Chuoshui River and its source, the
more we felt that we could never truly finish this journey, as our
hearts were torn between praising the beauty of the verdant vistas
and a sense of shame at knowing so little about them.
When I first reached the headwaters of the Chuoshui River,
I was overwhelmed by the emerald multitude of towering peaks,
one higher than the next, the zigzagging ridges casting wide arcs
of shade on the mountainsides which were shimmering in various
hues of darker and lighter green. All these subtle nuances
were too much for a plain farmer whose everyday life was far
removed from these high mountain areas.
The massive bulks of the mountains rose one behind the other in endless succession,....
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