Articles in Alishan Trip
Alishan 001 – Snap Decision to Go to Alishan
Friday July 2, 2010 7:00
Snap decision to go to Alishan. It’s seven in the morning, and the train has just left from the platform. I’ve had so much experience taking these trains and it is so easy that I’m taking it almost too casually. I stroll out of Rooftop in Taipei fifteen minutes before my train is scheduled to leave. I hop on the MRT …
Alishan 002 – The Giant Trees
Saturday July 3, 2010
After my rejection of the Fancylake breakfast, I got a biendang and then went for a stroll through the trails up above Fenqihu. I marveled again at all the work that went into building them. They really were beautiful trails. Each one was only a kilometer or two long, but they took me through quiet forests of bamboo, past giant trees, and …
Alishan 003 – The Northern Tsou Villages
July 5, 2010
The aboriginal people of the Alishan area are known as the Tsou. I know next to nothing about them except that they are the original inhabitants of this area and that the villages and towns around here are Tsou. I assume they speak their own language as well as Mandarin. I also know that tea is, along with tourism, an economic mainstay of …