All articles filed in Central Taiwan

Long a city with an unusual hybrid blue-collar/academic character, serving the factories that powered Taiwan’s famed economic miracle and home to numerous universities, Taichung is fast reinventing itself as a city of dynamic cultural sophistication. Everywhere you look, it seems, you see cranes and crews putting up new buildings or fixing and prettying up old ones.

This Alishan three-day adventure begins on the island’s Western flatlands with visits to attractions located just before the gap in the mountain wall at the town of Chukou that gives access to the rugged, ever-higher peaks hiding beyond. Provincial Highway No. 18 takes you there, and we head upward and skyward along its dramatic twists to the area around the small settlement of Fenqihu, a place of great character whose original reason for being was to serve as a halfway station and timber-loading point on the Alishan Forest Railway, one of the world’s highest and most picturesque lines. The adventure ends far, far higher still, in the Alishan National Forest Recreation Area, the jewel in the Alishan crown.This Alishan three-day adventure begins on the island’s Western flatlands with visits to attractions located just before the gap in the mountain wall at the town of Chukou that gives access to the rugged, ever-higher peaks hiding beyond. Provincial Highway No. 18 takes you there, and we head upward and skyward along its dramatic twists to the area around the small settlement of Fenqihu, a place of great character whose original reason for being was to serve as a halfway station and timber-loading point on the Alishan Forest Railway, one of the world’s highest and most picturesque lines. The adventure ends far, far higher still, in the Alishan National Forest Recreation Area, the jewel in the Alishan crown.