An over crowded and polluted hive of human industry or scenic seashore surrounding an interior comprised of equal parts jungle and mountai...
An over crowded and polluted hive of human industry or scenic seashore surrounding an interior comprised of equal parts jungle and mountains? A factory island pumping out high-tech or Asia's semi-tropical Switzerland, only with lovely beaches and cheaper food?
Would you believe Taiwan is all this and more?
THE LAND
Lying 165km off the coast of mainland China, separated by the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan straddles the Tropic of Cancer and is shaped kind of like a sweet potato, 394 km in length and 144km wide. The territory includes a number of other islands, including the Penghu Archipelago and the islands of Matsu and Kinmen in the Taiwan Strait, and Green Island and Lanyu, off the east coast.
At 36,000 sq km, Taiwan is roughly the size of the Netherlands, and about a third more populous. But whereas most of Holland is flat, Taiwan is a different story entirely. Being mostly mountainous, the majority of Taiwan's 23 million people live on the small expanses of flat land to the west of the Central Mountain Range, a series of jagged mountain peaks that stretches for over 170 km from north to south. It's this topography that makes Taiwan's capital Taipei feel considerably more crowded than Amsterdam.
Crisscrossed with many small rivers that empty in the sea, the plains and basins of western Taiwan essentially provide the only land suitable for either agriculture or industry. The east coast, with its towering seaside cliffs and rocky volcanic coastline, is utterly spectacular; outside of the three cities of Ilan, Hualien and Taitung, it's sparsely populated as well.
CLIMATE
Taiwan's climate is subtropical. Though often damp, winters can be pleasant enough, especially in the south. Up north, it tends to get chilly and damp, and many Taipei residents find themselves pining for some sunshine come mid-February. Typhoon season hits in late summer to mid-autumn, and tends to strike the east coast particularly hard. Summers are hot and humid: walking out of an air-conditioned mall in August feels like being wrapped in a steaming towel. Perfect Taiwan weather? In our opinion, autumn and spring are best. Summer's fun, but prepare to sweat, and as for winter, down south it's still nice most of the time, but up north, well, Taipei has plenty of indoor malls!
Taiwan is also prone to earthquakes, sitting as it does on the colliding Eurasian and Philippine plates. Before you curse the forces of geology, consider that these grinding plates are also responsible for the beautiful mountains and amazing hot springs that make a trip to Taiwan truly worthwhile. Most of these quakes are small earth tremors. Some are for more devastating, particularly the one that occurred on 21 September 1999, which measured 7.3 on the Richter scale and killed thousands. A more recent quake off the southern coast in late 2006 caused only a few casualties, but severed several underground cables, disrupting telephone and internet service across Asia.
WILDLIFE
Lush and mountainous, Taiwan is home to a wide range of flora and fauna, particularly bird life.
Fauna
Though many of Taiwan's larger mammals were driven to near extinction through hunting (much of it to make Chinese medicine), increased environmental education and awareness since the mid-'90s has helped to save a number of species native to the island. The Central Mountain Range has the largest amount of remaining forest in Taiwan and is home to a wide range of animals including the wild boar, Formosan macaque, Formosan black bear, sambar deer and pheasants.
The Formosan black bear is the largest mammal on the island and lives at altitudes above 2000m. It's highly unlikely you'll see one as they're very elusive; judging by the fact that some humans still seem to view them as walking medicine chests, this is probably a wise characteristic for them to have developed. Another elusive animal is the Formosan clouded leopard, which lives in the lowlands of the Central Mountain Range. Sadly, the last sighting of the leopard was in 1985 and authorities are not certain if any more of these animals remain in the wild.
Monkeys live in the mountains of Taiwan as well, some of them rather close to major cities; you stand a good chance of running into a Formosan macaque on the trail from Tianmu to Yangmingshan. Snkes also call Taiwan home, and though the majority of these are nonvenomous, the ones that are poisonous fall into that rare 'last animal you meet in this life' category. Hikers should tread with caution (and with good boots).
Flora
More than half of Taiwan is covered with dense forest. Experts claim that the island is home to over 4002 types of plants, 1000 of them found only in Taiwan. Some of these include the Chinese juniper and cowtail pine, though the most common species are bamboo, spruce, fir and cypress found at higher altitudes. Taiwan was once covered with camphor forests but, sadly, most of these have been logged to near extinction. The largest one remaining is at Fuyuan Forest Recreational Area in the Eastern Rift Valley.
NATIONAL PARKS & RESERVES
The Republic of China (on Taiwan) National Park Act was passed in 1972, and since then six national parks have been established. This puts the percentage of Taiwan's acreage designated as national parkland at around 9%, which is pretty substantial for a country of Taiwan's relatively diminutive size.
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Features
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Activities
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Best Time to Visit
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Kenting
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Popular beach resort with ‘Cancún of Taiwan’
vibe
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Swimming with tropical fish, diving in
pristine coral reefs, migratory bird-watching, surfing, camping, 3-day rock
concerts
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Year-round
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Kinmen
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Once off-limits military outpost transformed
into a beautiful island park
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Hiking, history, bike riding, ancient
villages, temples, bird-watching
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Summer, autumn
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Sheipa
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Second-highest mountain in Taiwan, diverse
terrain, Formosan landlocked salmon
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Hingking, bird-watching
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Summer, autumn, spring
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Taroko
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Spectacular gorge, Formosan macaque,
pheasants
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hiking
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Summer, autumn, spring
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Yangmingshan
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Beautiful mountain park with varied climate,
butterflies
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Hiking, hot spring, bird-watching
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Summer, autumn, spring
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Yushan
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Tallest mountain in Taiwan, rare Formosan
salamander, Formosan black bear
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Hiking alpine, tundra and cedar forests
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Summer, autumn, spring
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There are also 18 nature and forest reserves around Taiwan, and it seems as though Taiwan is making up for lost time when it comes to preserving what untouched areas it has left. In addition to national parks, designated scenic areas have been established across the island, including the East Coast National Area between Hualien and Taitung.
Some of the most scenic spots in Taiwan can be found on the outer islands. Beautiful and replete with culture, history and wildlife, the island of Kinmen is itself a national park; just off the coast of mainland China, both Kinmen and Little Kinmen are excellent places to spot rare waterbirds. Halfway between China and Taiwan, the windswept Penghu Archipelago offers a surprising variety of topography, from flat white-and-black sand beaches to dramatic, jagged cliffs. And both Lanyu and Green Island offer otherworldly landscapes more reminiscent of Polynesia than East Asia.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
When Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist troops were driven off the mainland, they brought more than just millions of Chinese people fleeing communism with them: they also brought capital, much of which was used to transform a primarily agrarian society into a major industrial powerhouse. Taiwan became wealthy, quickly, but it also became toxic, with urban air ranking among the world's 'economic wealth, vast tracts of Taiwan's forests have been destroyed, decimating animal habitats and causing extensive soil degradation.
But over the recent years, much has been done to reverse decades of environmental derogation throughout Taiwan. Some of this can be attributed to a 'happy' accident of global economics: much of Taiwan's most of polluting industrial production has shifted to mainland China. But some of the improvement can be attributed to increased government oversight. Enviromental laws, long 'on the books with a wink towards industry', are now enforce far more stringently across the board, and the results have been tangible, eg the Danshui and Keelung Rivers in Taipei, once horribly befouled, are significantly cleaner in sections. We've even seem people swimming at the foot of the Danshui River in Bitan, and the Keelung, while hardly pristine, is home to a variety of waterfowl. Urban air quality has improved markedly, thanks to a combination of improved public transport, more stringent clean-air laws, and a switch to unleaded petrol. Taipei's air quality, once almost as bad as Mexico City's, now hovers somewhere around London's.
The Taiwanese collective unconscious has changed as well: so much of the emerging 'Taiwanese identity' is tied in with having a clean and green homeland that people are tending to take environmental protection far more seriously. This isn't to say that you won't see people chucking garbage into the street (or along wooded trails), but you tend to see far less of it than you would have a decade ago. (A notable exception to this is betel-nut-chewing taxi drivers. They still hack their blood-red spit and throw their chewed-betel-nut-filled Dixie cups out on the road, and they're about as tái kè, or 'truly Taiwanese' as you can get).
There's still much more to be done, of course. As travellers, we can't promise that you won't find empty beverage cans while hiking along a pristine mountain trail, or the remains of somebody else's picnic in a city park. The issue of decaying barrels of nuclear waste buried on the aboriginal island of Lanyu has also yet to be resolved to anybody's satisfaction. The environmental implications of the just-completed Taiwan High-Speed Rail are also something worth considering. Though proponents claim it will have a positive environmental impact by reducing car and air travel, some environmentalists feel that the positioning of the stations (outside of city centers in what was once farmland) will create urban sprawl and other environmental problems.
So while it's fair to say that Taiwan has made great strides on the environmental front, it's clear that yet more remains to be done.
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