We stumbled around in the dark after our 3:30AM wake up call and were briefly revived by a cup of hot sweet ginger tea while waiting for the shuttle to take us to the Alishan sunrise viewing train. Jules was a bit grumpy due to the chilly weather, but we dutifully stood on line with hundreds of other hopefuls, crossing our fingers for a glimpse of the famously elusive Alishan sunrise. Jules had asked me the day before, “Mommy, what if we came all this way and we don’t get to see the ‘曰出’ (sunrise)? Will you be upset?” I thought about it and told him that I would certainly be disappointed, but maybe the fog or rain would allow us to see something different and the adventure that we had already had along the way was worth it no matter what. The uncertain look on his face mirrored the doubt in my heart, but I figured I should at least put up a good front.
After getting off at Zhushan Station, 98% of the tourists beelined it for the viewing platform straight ahead. Our guardian angel, in the guise of an Alishan House employee, had told us the night before to go to the right of the viewing platform and up a steep hill for 10-15 minutes for the 360 degree viewing platform. For those who know my true nerdie self, I am a research junkie. I loooove to research the heck out of just about anything, especially when it comes to food and travel. In the many travel sites and blogs I had read about Alishan not a single one mentioned anything about this viewing platform. I batted away thoughts of being led down the garden path as we trudged our way up the hill with five other passengers from our train. Ta da da…an elevated wooden platform providing an unobstructed 360 degree view magically appeared before our eyes!! There are so few travel secrets left in this world that I can’t bring myself to spill the beans about this gem on any travel site. Perhaps other travelers felt the same way.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the stuff that impresses 8 year olds so much, but the rest of us reveled in the amazingly clear views and changing colors as the sun made its way above the horizon. At times it felt like being in a watercolor with varying shades and hues overlapping each other over a downy blanket of clouds. The backlit clouds in the sky were outlined in a scintillating gold as the first rays of the sun stretched and fanned out in all directions. It was a moment of pure earthly magnificence. I actually found the pre-sunrise sky to be more moving and dramatic than when the sun actually did its jack-in-the-box over the mountains. We would find out later that a sunrise in Alishan hadn’t been visible in quite some time, and the skies opened up later that afternoon with rain dampening the prospects of tourists after us. We felt blessed, indeed.
By 7AM we already felt pretty accomplished. We waited at the Alishan Visitor Center for our private driver, Mr. Xiao, to pick us up. 40 minutes later, with a whirlwind of apologies and frenzied activity, we piled into Mr. Xiao’s cab and sped off to our next adventure.
One of Taiwan’s greatest treasures and exports is its Alishan high mountain oolong tea. The tea is grown at elevations above 1000m (3000 ft), and the moist, cool climate in Alishan produces the perfect floral and fruity notes that excellent oolong tea is known for. I had tried calling a couple of tea farms ahead of time to book tours, but I was told that it was currently spring tea harvest season, so all of the tea farms were crazy busy with the harvest and couldn’t accommodate tourists. Good thing we had Mr. Xiao.
He brought us to Zhong Xing Tea Farm (中興製茶廠) where we smelled the fragrant oolong tea leaves as soon as we opened the car doors. They allowed us to wander around the factory, seeing the freshly picked tea leaves drying in the open air and watching the leaves spin around in a dryer to stop the oxidation process. We watched as one young man effortlessly lifted an incredibly heavy ‘bale’ of tea into the leaf sorting machine. Ahh, country boys. We followed up our self-guided tour with a tea tasting and appreciated the remarkable difference between subsequent brews with the same tea leaves.
No English signage in sight? Check
Prospect of amazingness? Extremely likely
Next on our agenda was the town of Fenqihu (奮起湖), a sleepy town located midway between Chiayi and Alishan on the old railway line. Railway or logging workers traveling to and from Alishan in the past would stop here for lunch, so it became famous for its bento, or lunch, boxes. Must. Have. Bento. Box. I had read about a good spot for the bento boxes, but Mr. Xiao shook his head and said that that spot was for tourists and led us down a quieter street, which turned into a narrow little street (all good signs so far) which dead ended at a tucked away bento oasis. We had been beyond lucky so far on this trip, and the luck continued as we were given the last four bento boxes of the day. These bamboo boxes of heaven were packed with rice, a tea egg, wild boar sausage, soy sauce braised chicken drumstick, fried fish, cabbage, mustard greens and fried wheat gluten, setting us back 75NT (about $2.50) each. I don’t even have the words (this tasty photo may suffice, though).
Philip, Katie and Matthew got some incredulous looks as the locals were trying to figure out how the 老外 (foreigners) found this place.
Philip: I’m going to go and pay for lunch.
Owner of restaurant (waving Philip away and walking towards me): Miss, do you want your guests to pay for their own lunch or do you want to pay for them?
Me: Um, my guests?
Owner of restaurant: Well, you are their tour guide, aren’t you?
Me: Uh…yes…I am.
This wasn’t the first time I was mistaken for the tour guide on this trip, so instead of getting into a lengthy explanation about how I met a foreigner and then had a mixed-blood child I just went with the tour guide gig.
Right about now is when I came to the horrible realization that I left my mobile back at the Alishan Visitor Center, two hours back up the mountain. Remember how I mentioned that Mr. Xiao was late to pick us up and when he did show up there was a frenzied flurry? Well, my phone was off to the side on the charging station, and I completely forgot about it in the haste of our departure. A few phone calls later I was relieved to know that my phone had been recovered and that a private messenger service would be sending it back to Taipei. Keep in mind that we had taken a high-speed train and a two hour bus ride to get to Alishan from Taipei in the first place. I was prepared to pay a couple hundred US dollars to get the phone back, hopefully in 4-5 days. Imagine my absolute confusion followed by giddiness when my phone arrived a day and a half later for the total cost of 130NT ($4.50 USD), which included insurance!! As Vizzini put it in ‘The Princess Bride,’ that’s inconceivable! Two weeks later, I am still pinching myself.
We boarded our high-speed train from Chiayi back to Taipei, and I let the kids have the night off before our next round of foodie adventures the next day.