We freewheel back into Pinglin for a deserved lunch on a street devoted to a unique local cuisine prepared by using tea-infusions and tealeaf oil.
The Chens, who own the Ten Fun Teahouse, tell me that cooking food with tea helps reduce its oil content. This is entirely consistent with a healthy cycling trip except that abundant courses appeared until the table bulged somewhat like my stomach. Crispy tealeaves fried tempura-style, tea-stained green noodles, and shrimps in tea-paste wrapped in rose-petals. When I depart there is sufficient caffeine in my system to ensure I would fail a random dope test.
Due south, the coastal mountains rise spectacularly throughout Hualien County and are incised deeply at Taroko Gorge National Park where marble cliff-faces plunge into the River Liwu.
Taroko hosts a significant population of Taiwan’s 14 indigenous aboriginal communities which once dominated the island before mass Chinese immigration in the 17th century. Now they constitute just 2 per cent of Taiwan’s population. Distinctive-looking, of Austronesian (a grouping including Filipinos and Indonesians) ethnicity, the local tribe are the eponymous Taroko or Atayal people; famed for their blue facial tattoos.
‘We mostly live modern lives now, like all Taiwanese,’ says 29-year-old ‘Summer’ Cheng Chien-Tzu. We meet her during another lunch stop – at Da Gili restaurant, a place run by Taroko aboriginals. She says nearly 10,000 indigenous people live around the gorge. ‘Girls aged 11 or 12 used to have a single blue line tattooed across their forehead, then vertical lines on their cheeks, depending on their status,’ says Summer. ‘Now it’s not considered beautiful.’
She shows me a book of old photographs. Some of the men in the pictures look ferocious, their chins tattooed to outline their warrior status. ‘They used to hunt heads many years ago,’ she says, playfully drawing a line across her throat, ‘but the Japanese stopped that when they invaded in 1938.’
The cycleways are routinely excellent as we continue cycling southwards, down the east coast’s flat, fertile seaboard backed by inland mountains. Around Cising we pedal for a while on an opulent marble cycle-path. Eventually the plain funnels between the blocky uplands of the East Rift Valley, where communities of Hakka-Chinese cultivate rice-paddies and pineapples.
One of the big plusses for weary cyclists is a profusion of hot springs issuing mineral-rich waters throughout the volcanic eastern coast. After a late afternoon cycling around Luyeh Lungtian’s hills, just north of Taitung City, we coast into the grandly named Luminous Hot Spring Resort. Total immersion in bicarbonate, sodium, potassium, and calcium-enriched waters naturally heated at 69°C is great for aching calf-muscles.
Comments are closed.