by Charles DeBenedetto
(Trail Marker for "Eighteen Turns". Photo Credit: K.H.)
It
had been a while since we had been on an adventure. Partly because the heavens
had been persistently raining for a month, and partly because of the state of
the world right now. Although, as I have said before, Taiwan has been the
safest place in the world thanks to our comprehensive and quick response to the
initial outbreak, still, Taiwanese people have been (rightly) cautious about
returning to “normal.” Department stores have been sparsely populated,
restaurants have not been seating customers to full capacity, and masks are
still even more commonplace than they were before.
But,
as we have had few new cases for a while, the scare is (seemingly) over, for us
at least. The end of the abnormal was when the Taiwanese Minister of Health,
Chen shi-chung, was filmed traveling to the tropical resort town of Kenting,
happily encouraging the Taiwanese people that it is time to leave your homes
and have fun again (and spend money to revitalize the Taiwanese economy). And
so, we too have begun to get back to finding new places to explore. This time,
we drove to Chunghua County, past Yuanlin Village, to a walking trail called “Eighteen
Turns.”
Yuanlin
is affectionately referred to as “the largest village in Taiwan,” which I
suppose means that it is the largest of all the small places in the country. Large
streets are busy with people buying snacks from street-side vendors, and
umbrellas are up in defense of the powerful sun. We stop in a Hong Kong-style
restaurant for lunch, and wonder if there will ever be another time when we can
actually go back to Hong Kong. Just like the post covid-19 world, there will be
a time when Hong Kong returns to “normal,” but it will be a new “normal.” The
old normal is never coming back. We eat slowly, and thoughtfully.
Leaving
the “biggest village,” we meander down side roads on the way to “Eighteen
Turns.” We pass a sign that says “She Tou Village: the home of socks.” I
chuckle at that, because Taiwanese villages often will have a specialty crop
based on their unique geography and climate, but couldn’t socks be made
anywhere? It is true, though, that Taiwan in general is famous for its socks,
and a large majority of them are made in this village. One time, my Nana mailed
me a pair of long socks for Christmas, with snowflakes and penguins on them. I
wore them happily for a couple months before realizing that they were actually made
in Taiwan. Thinking about my socks’ journey across the Pacific and back made me
chuckle again.
Finally,
we park under some bamboo stalks, walk past a koi fish pond, and reach the
visitor center, which also serves as the entrance to the trails. Inside, we
find a small museum of dead but well-preserved specimens of insects and other
small creatures you might find along the trail.
Lately,
like many others who are home-bound, we have been playing Animal Crossing, a video
game where, among other things, you catch lots of bugs and fish, and so we have
become amateur zoologists. Walking around the museum, we were surprised at how
many insects we could recognize, thanks to Animal Crossing. “Oh, hey, that’s a
man-faced stinkbug!” “And that’s a violin beetle!” After identifying many of
the insects, we left the visitor center with a little more faith in the
educational quality of video games.
For
some, those creepy-crawlies might have served as a deterrent, but not for us,
and so we began our hike.
As
you’d expect, “Eighteen turns,” is a very meandering trail (I don’t think that
there are exactly eighteen turns, though). It is an old trail, one that traders
used a long time ago to connect villages in Changhua and neighboring Nantou
counties. It is humid, but I wear long sleeves to protect myself from the
mosquitoes and the sun. The flora is green and lush, growing uncontrolled as if
it belongs in the Jurassic Era. After walking for a kilometer or two, we stop
abruptly.
On
a lone, skinny tree, dozens of Japanese rhinoceros beetles are cutting lines
into the bark and sucking away at the sap. Everyone has their own spot, except
for two who are fighting for a piece of prime real estate. In classic Darwin natural
selection style, they fight until one proves to be the fittest, and the fittest
truly does survive. Like a spatula flipping a pancake, the stronger of the two
puts his horn under the weaker one’s belly, and flicks him hard off of the tree
and into the grass below. Now the Alpha beetle, I assume that he continues to
drink all of the sap, grow stronger, fight the rest of the males and mate with
all of the females. The spectacle over, we carry on.
(Beetle fight. Long scars on the tree can be seen where they were digging for sap. Photo Credit: K.H.)
As
advertised, the trail twists and turns, and we try to go slow, taking in the
natural scenery that is so rare, as much of our lives is destined to be away
from it. At the end, the trail shoots upward, a good seventy degrees, and
suddenly we are sweating profusely. Shortly after the difficulty begins, it is
over, and we reach the top.
It
is not a mountain, more of a hill, really, and so civilization still exists at
the top. There is a lone, narrow paved road, a small shack of a Tudi Gong
shrine, and a tea field. We walk over to the shrine, and make our presence
known to the Earth God. It is customary to do this, but I do find it
meaningful, as I always wind up thinking, “How is it possible that we could ever
have found our way to you?” Also, I always think, “And perhaps we will never
cross paths again.”
The
entire trail is a circle, so we walk along the flat top of the hill, to try to
find where the connecting trail is. Before we get there, the tea field gives
way to a pineapple field, and we squat down to get a closer look. They are very
compactly grown, and they pop out of a low plant, almost like a bush. I admit
to myself that I have been eating pineapples my whole life, but I never knew
how they grew before coming to Taiwan.
I
have a friend here who says that he thinks pineapples must have come from outer
space, because they look so otherworldly. Looking at them in this field here, I
have to agree. They have a fabric cover on them, and we are unsure why. Later,
we learn that it is to prevent them from getting too much sunlight, but at the
time I pondered whether or not it was some Martian technology, perhaps
magnetized, so that when the UFO came back for them, it could just suck them up
without having to land and make a crop circle.
(The otherworldly pineapples. Photo Credit: K.H.)
Beside
the field, the farmer’s family is selling chopped pineapples for fifty Taiwanese
dollars a bag (about $1.50 USD). The lady looks at me, and asks in Mandarin,
“American?” I nod, and in response, she puts more pineapple chunks into the
bag, free of charge. We thank her, and take a seat next to the hillside, where
we can look out on Changhua County, speckled with rice paddies, villages, and
beyond them, the bullet train zooming by far in the background. We use
toothpicks to pick up the pineapple chunks, but they are too large and must be
tackled in two or three bites, resulting in sweet juice dribbling down our
hands and chins. It’s sticky and messy, but quenching after a sweaty hike.
There
is too much pineapple to finish in one sitting, so we tie up the plastic bag it
came in, wave goodbye to the farmer’s family, and descend the seventy degree
slope to slowly make our way back.
(The view from the top. Photo Credit: K.H.)
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