The Government Sent Me to Taidong

In early August, 2023, the Cross-Generational Bilingual Training Program in Taitung invited me to their Taitung In-Depth Tourism English Service Guided Tour, or, CGBTPiT’s TIDTESGT. They have no website.

As far as I could determine, this program is from some kind of tourism-focused office of the Taidong government, with the objective of developing tourist activities for English speakers within Taidong county. Wait, but there’s no “English” in the title of their Training Program, it just says “Bilingual!” Don’t worry, in Taiwan, “bilingual” can only ever mean “English and Mandarin” (a common critique of the 2030 Bilingual Nation Initiative).

Good motive, though they apparently had a bit of trouble getting recruits for the nearly all-expenses-paid trip. That might be because the only way I was able to hear about it was Jade sending me a Google Doc application for the trip. That doc did have some nice videos from the previous couple trips, though:

Now that I re-read this form, I’m realizing I got the name wrong, above. It’s actually the Taitung County Government International Development and Planning Department’s trip, executed by CoCreate Planning & Design Consultancy, or TCGIDPDCCP&DC for short. Who knows!

Point is, someone paid for my train tickets and housing to go to Taidong and stay there for two nights, including several incredible meals and really fun tours and activities. I had a great time and want to share some of the stuff we got up to because it was a pretty cool way to check out Taidong.

If you’re interested in further reading material, or an alternative itinerary, you can check out the booklets they made for our reference during the trip. There’s actually some fun info in there. Here’s the PDF from our trip, and another one from the trip of people after us. I tried to duplicate the info into this post but the PDFs aren’t formatted in a way that makes copying text out easy. Another good resource is Crossroad’s circle.so page for Taidong.

Day 0

Train to Taidong

I grabbed a train from Taipei, at Songshan Station, to Taidong. If you get an express train, usually labeled something like “T.C. Ltd. Exp (Coast Line)” or “T.C. Ltd. Exp (Mountain Line)”, you can get to Taidong in just under 4.5 hours for about 750NTD one way. I booked on the TRA Android app which works shockingly well and takes USA credit cards.

Stay at Norden Ruder hostel

Stephen holding a banner — Stephen was our main dude

I showed up on time, purposefully ignored the nice people with the cool flag that were obviously trying to get my attention so as to beeline to the bathroom, then came back out to meet up with my handlers, who drove us to the excellent Norden Ruder hostel, my favorite place to stay in Taidong. We usually stay here for Crossroads trips as well.

Fish tank in the hostel — They have really cool interior design

View of the hostel from the bottom floor — The hostel is built around this really nice lobby on the bottom floor that gets lots of natural light

Map of Taidong on hostel wall — Surprisingly useful map of Taidong!

Eat a Hella Good Dinner

Stephen recommended a couple really good looking restaurants, but only one of his suggestions was actually open, a place that focuses on red quinoa called “七里坡紅藜養生料理” . It was really good! The three of us relaxed and got to know eachother, since Bream was busy.

Some kind of fruit drink — Really refreshing fruity almost smoothie-like drink

Pudding — Really good black sugar pudding with perhaps quinoia on top

Cold tofu and noodle salad — Cold tofu noodle salad

Fish set — I got a fish set, it was really fresh!

Day 1

Coffee — First, coffee at Norden Ruder! They have really good pour overs available from local Taiwan growers

Taromak Rukai Community Tour

Our first big tour was at Taromak Rukai tribe. In Mandarin that’s 達魯瑪克部落.

Our tour guide arriving on a scooter — Our tour guide showed up in full kit on a scooter

We hung out for a bit with our tour guide in his really cool outfit waiting for the student that was apparently supposed to translate for us, then kicked off an “entering ritual,” or 入村儀式.

The translator and the tour guide — They found some student to function as translator. She was pretty good!

Bream and I were volunteered for the entering ritual. It involved standing before the big statue at the entrance to the tribe, shouting some things, and chucking a small bamboo cup of liquor into the air after taking a small sip. It sounded like we were giving thanks and offerings to ancestors and various animist spirits, such as the mountains, air, forest, etc. Fresh start to the day!

Bream and I doing the entering ritual — Bream and I listening attentively to the man with the half meter machete

The bamboo cup used to present alcohol — The little bamboo cup, equivalent to a double shot I'd say

The statue at the entrance to the tribe, where we performed the entering ritual

Cat — This cat licked its balls throughout the presentation.

The group posing with a banner near the tribe entrance — The guide was insistent that we all take a picture of us all pointing at the sky

From here we wandered over to a fire memorial, 火災紀念亭, commemorating a tragedy that had occurred some 60 or so years ago, where a large portion of the village burned down during lunar new year. The guide cracked a joke about a new years BBQ that the student refused to translate, lol.

The mountains around the tribe — Though hot, the environment around the tribe was gorgeous, with the thickly jungled mountains in the distance

Next was a history lesson and notes on the myths and customs of the tribe, in mandarin 部落簡史、文化與神話故事. They had a couple panels depicting mythological scenes, as well as a large pole with a sculpture on top that included many symbols important to the tribe.

The tour guide teaching us about myths of the tribe

The myth he spent the most time on involved a small and large species of deer, and their involvement in acquiring fire for humans, who in the mythos could communicate with animals directly. There was a swapping of antlers involved in the story, which the small species of deer is still upset with to this day, which is why its barking cry sounds like “fuck! fuck!” I think it’d be interesting to follow up more on these myths because the acquisition of fire myth sounded a lot like a promethean myth.

Depiction of making traditional food — This panel showed the making of a traditional food from millet. I just like how stacked the dudes were. Also included, in the top left, is the swing for which the tribe is famous; more on that later.

The sculpture on top of the pole — Many symbols on the sculpture. From the top are two 'blade feathers' from an eagle, the largest wing feather, which only a chief is allowed to wear. The lilies are worn by virgin women, and if the village clothesperson thinks you aren't a virgin, they can rip off the lily and publicly humiliate you. The pot (center portion) symbolizes a woman's womb, but also each family has a family pot in the house. If family members leave, they crack off a piece of the pot, so if they return even decades later, they can prove their membership in the family by matching their fragment of the pot to the one in the home. The crossed machetes are just machetes and I think they're included because people just think they're kinda cool.

Closeup of mural — I liked the murals they had all over the place.

The tour guide talked on and off about how the tribe fared during Japanese occupation, and mentioned specifically really classic fascist techniques employed, such as choosing specific members of the tribe to police the camp they’d all been moved to, rather than use Japanese soldiers to do so. He lamented that the Japanese also forced them to stop their custom of beheading intruders, and that the Japanese forced them to make toilets.

Butterflies — There were hundreds of butterflies around.

All of us posing in front of the sculpture — We must stand and point again before moving on.

Next we walk into the village proper to check out the chieftain’s house, 頭目家與祖靈屋. On the way we pass a Christian funeral for a really old member of the tribe, apparently an elder of some form. Christian iconography is a constant theme in Taidong tribes, with various missionaries showing up frequently over the last century or so, usually with gifts and aid. The tribes, typically removed from the greater benefits of whoever is imperialising them at the time, welcome the missionaries and their gifts with open arms, and then the missionaries get to work convertin’. It’s unclear just how serious tribal members are about Christianity, or how animist the religion has become in the meantime. They certainly maintain a large portion of their customs and beliefs, particularly around death and ancestor worship.

The church at which the funeral was being held — Top of the church where the funeral was being held.

Virgin mary statue in a community center.

We walked up to the chieftain’s house, which was near another building that I believe traditionally was where the millet was stored. We apparently weren’t supposed to point at the building or really even look at it too much. We were given some kind of explanation about how the food there was reserved for the sick, but I wasn’t clear on that.

The doorway of the chieftain's house — The chieftan gets to have iconography around his door that nobody else does, such as the blade feathers on a headband. Note as well the traditional pot.

Statue of a man — The unfortunately now banned practice of beheading is memorialized.

A kid on a toy car — We got to see what the locals were up to.

Dog on a table — It was hot, the dog was cooling off.

Man on a scooter — People in the south don't wear helmets, I've no idea why.

We hop in our bus to go up the mountain a bit. On the way, we pass the largest of the swings that make the tribe famous. The swings are used during various festivals.

Big swing in a field — This swing is the largest in the country, and was built entirely by hand.

Our first stop at the top of the mountain is a smaller version of the big swing. As the only unmarried woman in our group, Liana is put on the swing. The tour guide instructs Bream to take her off the swing “without letting her touch the ground,” which leads to some confusion, but eventually he figures it out.

Liana riding the small swing — Only unmarried women are allowed to ride the swing. Bummer.

Bream carrying Liana — Newlywed husbands carry their wives off the swing, and then don't set them down for as long as they can, as a ritual show of strength.

From there we were toured around the jungle a bit, with the tour guide occasionally pointing out and picking plants that were edible, and letting us taste them. This was my favorite part of the day.

The tour guide holding an edible plant — Some of the plants were sweet, others sour.

The tour guide standing next to another edible plant — Many plants are used as seasonings.

A closeup shot of one of the plants — I'm not sure I'll be able to remember which plants are which! This one was sweet.

A coffee tree in the jungle. — They also had coffee trees growing randomly in the jungle!

Unidentified plant — No idea what this is. Looks cool though!

The tour guide also pointed out a stinging nettle plant, and told a story about how adults aren’t allowed to hurt children that aren’t their own, but they can smack them with stinging nettle, and he believed this to be an effective form of corporal punishment. Hm.

The tour guide taking a selfie with all of us — Inevitable jungle selfie.

After this the tour guide stuffed us in a hollow tree and told us the tribe likes hollow trees because they smack them with sticks to communicate across long distances, and also because there’s often beehives inside where they can get honey. Our tree also had a beehive, which made me think about murder hornets, so I didn’t enjoy being in the hollow tree. Also, he makes us listen to the tree bark, and is surprised we hear nothing. He says the ability to hear the tree is based on wisdom, so I guess we aren’t wise. He says that hunters have to have very sensitive hearing in the forest.

He hikes us up past a bunch of old Japanese bomb shelters, passes out a bunch of headlamps, and takes us into an old cave full of bats. He wants us to be careful to not shine lights at the bats or be too loud and disturb them, but as soon as we enter the bats start flying around, so, they were disturbed despite our efforts.

A bat in the cave — It was very hard to take a picture of the bat in the dark cave.

Andrea silhouetted in the cave. — Classic Taiwan thing, wait around for 15 minutes while everyone takes some preplanned photo thing. 'Cave silhouette' is now in my 'Stock Taiwan Photos' repertoire, alongside 'Jumping on the Beach' and 'Sticking My Ass Out on a Stand Up Paddleboard.'

All of us pointing in the jungle — Have to take the pointing picture before we can move on.

After the cave, we hiked over to a hut, where food was being set up, and a couple bows had been set out with some arrows for us to fiddle with. To access the hut, we had to step over some reeds on the ground, as well as an incense pot. This was supposed to dispel bad spirits or something.

Bream and others stepping over the reeds on the ground. — Stepping over the reeds to dispel the spirits.

Liana shooting a bow and arrow, observed by the tour guide. — Liana was scary good with the bow.

Bream shooting the bow. — Bream shot the bow alright, boy did he ever shoot that bow.

After we were done messin around, we’re brought to a pile of dirt and rocks. This was a traditional way of cooking called, I believe, “Ichibi.” The method involves having the kids dig a huge pit and chucking a bunch of vegetables and whatever other food into it. They cover this with stones, set a fire on the stones, and then cover the whole thing in mud and let it cook. Apparently it doesn’t cook very well but they eat it anyway. It’s supposed to be a good activity to do when the parents are out hunting or whatever, and the grandparents want to keep the kids busy. Thus, the tour guide seemed to feel quite nostalgic about it. He described his culture as a scarcity culture and said that being able to eat so much food at once was a delight.

The food covered in rocks and dirt — The tour guide said that typically the food is just chucked straight up into a pit and covered with rocks and dirt, but they wrapped it all in tinfoil and covered it with a pot for our sake.

We dig out the Ichibi and bring it over to a table where a veritable feast had been laid out. It’s all super good food. I really like the blood sausage. Some of the food is made with herbs we saw in the forest. I like that. We eat and talk a while. Some tea is served, which we can optionally mix with a millet wine they make locally. I thought it was surprisingly refreshing.

My bowl of food — Really hearty, seemingly quite healthy, lunch!

After lunch we had a feedback session, which was part of why the government was paying for us to be there: we were to let the tour guide know what we thought, and any suggestions we have. Personally I didn’t really have any notes, I had a great time, and mentioned I’d have paid a lot to just walk around the forest with the dude and learn about all the plants and what I can eat.

Liana walking with the bell on her waist — Liana shaking her bell.

We finish off with some kind of traditional activity where a bell is strapped to our waist and we walk and try to regularly ring the bell with our hip movement. Liana and I both do it, and she has more swagger than me so she wins handily. It’s explained to us that bells make for a good way to communicate across great distances.

Final picture of us all pointing at the sky. — Final pointing at the sky picture!

Sunrise Driftwood Workshop and Paiwan Tribal Community Tour

After that excellent and exhausting tour, we pile back onto the bus and, after a quick 7-11 stop (refill water bottles!!), we all pass out for the hour drive to the next tribe we were to visit.

We stop at a teahouse right above Duoliang Railway Station , which I believe is the more famous thing in the area. The station is defunct now, but affords good photos of trains with the ocean in the background, if you’re into that kind of thing, which judging by the google maps page for the place, many thousands of people are.

A train with the ocean in the background — The ocean was gorgeous that day!

A tray of drinks — The fruit tea was very refreshing on this extremely hot day.

The tea shop was combined with the local cultural center, which included a woodworking shop. The woodworking cultural center thing was set up after a major typhoon caused a great deal of destruction in the village, upon which event many descendants of villagers came back from Taipei and elsewhere to help rebuild. They didn’t really have any carpentry experience, so older folks taught them, and then they applied these skills to making other cool things, like art. Now the woodworking shop is used to create art, toys, and puzzles from local driftwood and wood.

A man working with some wood — Unfortunately we didn't get to do any woodworking.

Some carved driftwood — The locals developed their style to show off more of the intricacies of the local driftwood.

A wood puzzle — We spent a fair bit of time playing with the wooden blocks.

This tour was a bit less structured than the previous one, with a younger local finding us after we’d been chilling out for a bit, and reading a script off a piece of paper in somewhat challenged English. We quickly switched to preferring her to just speak Mandarin while Liana and Stephen helped translate. No local student provided for translation here, for some reason, not that I minded.

We were given rides (why not just a quick hike? I’m not sure) higher up the mountain into the tribal area proper, where we were brought to a little supermarket all the people we met really liked to talk about. It was run by the third generation of a family of Han Chinese that had come to the village decades ago. They’re renown for being kind and letting children and poor people just take food. Later we learn they keep fastidious records and people would often find their grandparents had large debts at the store after they died. A lot of the food in the supermarket was super oldschool, lots of various canned good that Stephen and the other Taiwanese kept saying they hadn’t seen in ages. That made me think about how boomers seemed to be eating a lot of funky canned food, which I thought was just a USA thing, but apparently not. We all bought little ice creams and headed to the second stop: a cool overhang that the village chief built cause he thought it would be a cool place to hang out in.

Hanging out in the overhang thing. — Nice view!

An old lady picking plants. — An old lady was picking random plants below us.

Our tour guide for Paiwan tribe. — Our tour guide.

A man on a motorcycle, outside the little supermarket. — Just some guy I liked the vibe of, coming to pick something up from the supermarket.

We piled back into the cars for another short ride (why not just hike???) to a cafe up on the hill. This was really cool, a gorgeous natural wood cafe with all outside seating, facing out over the ocean. Surrounded by native plants and little nick-nacks. All local to Taiwan tea, coffee, and snacks. We hung out at the cafe for a few hours without any kind of itinerary, so we basically interrogated the tour guide on information about the village, the tribal lifestyle, why she decided to move back to the town from Taipei, and etc.

A dragonfruit plant — There was wild dragonfruit growing near the cafe.

Fruit growing on a tree — And other fruit!

This tribe has two elders because one was essentially robbed of a bunch of shells by another village, so an elder from another tribe that married in took over the role. Apparently the shells were very valuable.

Sweet potato slices — Local sweet potato, baked. Addicting.

A waffle — The waffle looked really fun but was just ok.

Apparently the cafe owner worked with the mayor to build the cafe without needing to buy land or pay rent, just because it improves the environment. Traditionally the tribe does communal ownership of land, but the Qing / ROC governments both required SOMEONE to own the land, which caused chaos. They also had stories about the initial arrival of Qing dynasty people, who would just farm wherever, then claim the land as their own. The tribe would do the same in return to make land claims, until one Qing governor just locked everything in (they describe him as “great”).

A fruit tea drink — All the drinks at the cafe were really good.

Cold brewed coffee — Local cold brewed coffee, very strong.

The cafe owner’s dream for the village is for more young people to come back. She’s not sure what they could do, or how the village could accommodate a huge influx of people if it involved building more housing. She says it’s difficult to think of ways to make money.

After a long hangout, we head back down to the woodshop, where there’s a wall with a timeline of this one Christian missionary’s time in the tribe, Hilber Jakob, from like the 40’s to 70’s. His contributions included things like building schools, roads, and etc. As a result, the tribe gets converted. It made me reflect further on the contradictory nature of imperialist action, which I believe Christian proselytizing to be. On the one hand, parts of a people’s culture are being erased in favor of a new religion, on the other, the benefits this guy (backed by the essentially infinite resources of whatever his Church was) brought to the tribe seem great! I haven’t had the opportunity to investigate further, and can’t find any information about the guy online, but it made me reflect not only on the effects of imperialism, and how anti-imperialist philosophies could also accomplish similar things in far-flung reaches of the world before people like the Christians can get to them, and what that might look like if the benefits could be wrought without the erasure of aspects a local culture.

We then to the abandoned train station. There’s a little food market down there that we ignore. We take some pics, then load onto the bus and head back to Taidong proper.

A cross emblazoned with traditional tribal symbols — Lots of Christianity at this tribe too. We were told the village is almost entirely Christian, with the noticeable exception of the supermarket owner and the cafe owner.

All of us posing for a goodbye picture — Goodbye!

Eat Another Hella Good Dinner

Back in Taidong, we go to an apparently famous chicken place, “Haijing Chicken Restaurant” . Food was good.

After that, we went to our hotel for the night, “SUP Daily”. They had lots of animals.

We had to get up at like, 5am the next day for stand up paddleboarding, so we went to bed pretty early.

Day 2

Stand Up Paddleboarding at Asscrack of Dawn

At some ungodly hour we woke up and piled onto the bus.

We drove over to a sort of lake not too far away. It was very pretty in the morning.

Ocean in the distance. — Massive waves in the distance.

The stand up paddleboards in the morning. — Very calm, much better than trying this in the ocean, I think.

We originally were going to do stand up paddleboarding in the ocean, but they were concerned about the conditions of the water so close to a typhoon, so we instead went to a beautiful, placid lake. Best part is that we started at a much more reasonable time. I think we were going to try to do the ocean one at like, 4am or something ridiculous.

All of us getting some stand up paddleboard coaching — We got some coaching from a teacher before we started.

After a brief lesson, we were strapped into some lifejackets and pushed out into the lake on our boards. We were all able to stand on our boards without too much trouble after only a few minutes of practice, after which we zipped all around the lake, stopping occasionally for our guide to teach us some new techniques or game. There were a couple Taiwanese people not part of our tour. They were more interested in taking photos and hanging around, while the rest of us got rowdy and spent our time shoving eachother off our boards, racing, and doing yoga.

Liana doing a yoga pose on a stand up paddleboard — Yoga skills.

After maybe an hour and a half or so, we all paddle back to shore, load up onto the bus, and head back to the hotel for naps.

Eat Hella Good Lunch

After packing up, we load onto the bus and drive WAY out to Chenggong Township, a town about an hour from Taidong that’s famous for its harbor, where spearfisherman dock and sell marlin. Our first destination is a renowned and award-winning slow food restaurant, 旗遇海味. We arrive a little earlier than expected, and nobody’s hungry yet because of the breakfast we all ate (I didn’t eat breakfast and was starving lol but oh well), so we swapped our day around a little bit and explored the fish auction area and looked at the spear fishing boats.

Boats in Chenggong harbor — The boats all had really cool designs and surprisingly clean paintjobs. The sloping ramp in the bottom left of the image is where a spear fisherman stands / squats, looking out for a marlin to spear. Apparently accidents are somewhat rare, but when they do happen they can be somewhat horrifying because the fisherman is partially strapped in. Though, according to the restaurant owner, only one person has died during his lifetime.

Dry squid in trays — We briefly chatted with a shop selling dry squid. They say it typically takes a day or two to dry in the sun, longer if the sun isn't out. They add some combination of salt and cooking alcohol.

Fish probing stick — The restaurant owner showed us the tool he uses to sample fish at the fish auction. After sampling, he decides his bid.

After wandering around the big harbor area used for the fish auction, we went back into the restaurant, where the owner taught us the history of fishing in the area. According to him, the marlin fishing scene used to be much larger in the past, with hundreds of marlins being brought in every day, and boats catching many tens of fish a day. Nowadays, boats only manage to get 0 - 4 fish a day. He’s not sure why, but speculates it has something to do with overfishing or climate change. Thus he says the local economy is depressed, and the fishermen are having a hard time making a livelihood. There’s also less buyers for marlin now. Apparently it’s a very international market for the marlin, including Korea and Japan. He started his restaurant to help boost the fishing economy and also to show off the local fish.

The restaurant owner showing us old photos of the history of fishing in the area.

His restaurant is a highly regarded member of the Taidong “slow food” scene. “Slow Food” is a social movement that basically encompasses values of good, clean, and fair food harvesting, production, and preparation. There’s multiple “Slow Food Festivals” in Taiwan every year and it’s a rapidly growing scene. I’m not entirely sure which organization does this, but I was told his restaurant has the Slow Food equivalent of a Michelin Star.

Finally, it was time to eat! This was some of the best food I’d had in a long time. It was all local ingredients, including locally spear-fished marlin! Behold:

Sashimi — A variety of sashimi. It was incredibly fresh and thick. Unfortunately I only got to try two of these!

Salad — A weirdly good salad. I never did get info on what dressing it was using. I had two helpings.

One of the stars of the show. Marlin prepared in a similar way to pork knuckles. They called it 'pork knuckles of the ocean.'

Egg and seaweed — Very simple egg and seaweed dish that was very well balanced. Not too seaweedy, not too salty.

Fish ball soup — Fish ball and seaweed soup. This was good but I did find this one a bit too seaweedy.

Beef and onion — I think this was beef or pork and onion, I'm actually not sure.

Tunas steak — Tuna steak prepared like beef steak. 'Steak of the ocean', absolutely incredible.

The freshest squid I've ever had. Squid fishing is incredibly popular in the region.

Fish soup with goji berries, unfortunately I can't remember what kind of fish! Somewhat medicinal flavor, but good.

Sweet salty crispy tube things — A sort of sweet/salty flaky pastry, involves meat floss, or fish meat floss alternative. Remarkably good. I wanted two. I only got one.

I went from starving to stuffed to the absolute brim. We lingered for only a little bit but needed to keep on schedule, so I had to haul my fat ass out of the chair and get ready to hike up the hill to our next destination. First, we were able to witness some fresh fish being auctioned off in the auction area!

Two fish on the ground at the fish auction — Two enormous fish!

Two people taking notes on the auction — I'm actually not sure what the clipboard folks were doing, or why there were two of them. Bureaucracy!

The winner of the auction holding his fish — The auction winner standing proudly with his fish. I wonder what his plans with it are! I have no idea what price it sold for.

All of us pointing and saying goodbye — Obligatory point somewhere picture.

Tour Some Old Japanese Dude’s House

So apparently Chenggong harbor was built mostly by the Japanese during their occupation. It’s really interesting to hear things from locals like “we didn’t really know how to catch those kinds of fish until the Japanese taught us,” or talking positively about the various forms of infrastructure the Japanese brought with them. Perhaps certain legacies of imperialism sit better with locals who don’t weren’t around for the horrors of it, or maybe those who suffered the worst of it didn’t have much in the way of ancestors that survived today, or maybe it wasn’t that bad, who knows? It’s a question I really want to explore more.

Man cutting metal — Saw this on the way to the house, some dude cutting something idk looks cool.

Anyway, the local governor the Japanese instilled to, ah, “govern” the area, built this house in a place where he could see the whole harbor. Its architecture is a unique mix of Japanese and European, with a second story platform / porch that’s more European style while the main house is entirely Japanese. It was apparently his routine to take breakfast on the porch while looking over the harbor.

View of the Japanese house — The house has traded hands a couple times, and is now in the hands of some locals in some sort of conservatorship arrangement with the government, funded partially, if I remember correctly, by a local church. There's significant earthquake damage that they're working to restore. There's visible cracks in the pillars, which apparently I forgot to take closeups of.

He is said to be much beloved by the locals and chose to live his entire life in Chenggong, even after occupation ended, and was given permission by the ROC to keep living there and maintain his household. He’s even said to be buried somewhere in the area.

All of us sitting on a couch getting a history lesson. — We first sat in the adjacent cafe for a history lesson. In the middle of this talk was a jolt of an extremely short earthquake. Very scary! Good though, because we were all very sleepy after lunch.

After the history lesson, we explored the house. It’s called 菅宮勝太郎宅.

A living room in the Japanese house, with a table and chairs. — The house is well maintained, filled not just with original objects, but also random old stuff saved from the entire neighborhood. It's functioning as an impromptu museum, the collection being random stuff from the area.

A view into the original roof structure. — During renovation, they discovered in the roof's original structure two placards indicating information about the builders and the era in which the building was constructed. This is apparently a Japanese tradition.

An old record player, and records on the wall.

All of us fiddling with an old 8 track player. — The owners of the museum said they haven't gotten this 8 track player to actually play a tape yet, and were happy with us to just fiddle with it. When have you ever been allowed to be that hands-on with an exhibit? Very cool and fun!

After wandering around the two floors of the house for maybe a half hour, we headed back to the cafe to relax with some coffee and desserts. The cafe is called 眺港café.

A brownie with googly eyes — Cute brownie. The drinks and dessert were pretty good but a little too sweet for my taste.

We had a bit of a feedback session during this time, then took the inevitable goodbye picture.

All of us pointing and saying goodbye in front of the Japanese house. — Point somewhere!

Go Home

We were all so exhausted at the end of the trip. We got back into the bus and barely said a word on our way to the train station. I actually had work to do as well so I couldn’t linger and chat, instead I had to post up in the train station straightaway. It’s good we got to the train station when we did, because at the last second we discovered that for some reason I had purchased my “return” ticket as if I was leaving from Taizhong to Taipei. No idea why! So I got it changed in time to get on a train going back to Taipei.

It was a really fun trip, and I’m really grateful for the unique itinerary. After traveling quite a bit, I’ve grown tired of the typical rote itinerary for a destination: museums, aquarium, zoos, government buildings, etc. It’s nice to go and be toured around places I wouldn’t have thought to find on my own. Especially since we had locals to talk with, and Mandarin interpretation help!

I highly recommend Taidong as a destination for those coming to Taiwan for more than a week. It doesn’t take too long to get to by train from Taipei, maybe about 4 or 5 hours depending, and there’s lots of unique, somewhat strange, history here, between the ROC settler colonists, the Japanese imperialists, and the various waves of Han imperialists, alongside Taiwan indigenous people. Not to mention the current strategic importance of Taidong as a large airforce base from which many tens of fighter jets take off every day, it’s just a very unique place!

I also highly recommend joining in similar tours to the one I went on if the opportunity presents itself. The hosts were struggling with people thinking the opportunity was too good to be true and thus is a scam. So hopefully you can find this post and know, nope, it’s real, and very fun!

As always, feel free to email caleb at this website if you have any questions, or perhaps can help me add more information about the places I visited!