Time exposure looking west to the setting New Year moon. The twin urban glows of Pingtung and Kaohsiung shine up through the sea of clouds.

If you look due east from Kaohsiung past the suburban sprawl, Daliao, the Gaoping river and the Pingtung plains you should see the 3000m Dawu mountain range only 35 kilometres away.

Occasionally around sunrise and a few days after each typhoon the mountains are visible to everyone. Otherwise Dawu is obscured by the industrial smog, rural burns, tropical air and the very fine alluvial dust that 4 million odd people trample.

As soon as you start to climb above the population soup the mountains emerge.

After a long rough winding mountain road you reach the trail head at 1540m

It is a 4 hour hike from the trail head to the hut. The trail is well marked and a good climb.

The hut sleeps 60 with further camping grounds for dozens of tents. Because of the week long Chinese New Year holiday and the miserable northern Taiwan winter drizzle the trail was busy and the hut was full.

We slept on benches under the balcony which was fine until about 1:30 am when super-keen hikers started preparing to for an accent to the summit for sunrise. We started the final climb at 3:30am and reached the ridge for sunrise. It is a further hour or so along the ridge to the top of North Dawu peak.

There were a few patches of ice left over from the cold front two weeks earlier.

And lots of red cedars, pines and small patches of alpine bamboo.

There was a little wildlife too.

We met some wonderful people along the trail. Lots of young and older couples, hiking groups, a few family groups too. Even some Taiwan resident Canadians and Australian making a dry New Years get-away from the north.

Along with the view from the top, the highlight was the sunset viewed from just before Juniper lodge. The sea of clouds is famous in the southern mountains but not always reliable.

There really are two Taiwans. One is above 1000 metres and is clean, sparsely populated and beautiful. When you are lucky you can see for miles and miles above the sea of clouds. The other exists below 1000 metres and is crowded, polluted and when you are lucky you can sometimes see the other through the swamp of smog.

Looking due north along the Southern first Section trail to Guanshan and the Southern Cross island highway.

Practicalities

You can reach the trailhead through Taiwu on Pingtung county road 106. Get your mountain permit from the police station in Taiwu.  The friendly police checked our gear, map and basic plan and waved us on when translation of the two forms became too difficult.

The trail requires some fitness but is not technically difficult. It can be easily done in two days if you start day 2 early.  The hut is well set-up with water and “mountain dump” toilets.

Though you don’t need one for this hike, if you would like a good detailed hiking map of the mountain try Books from Taiwan.

With the trees cut down and the smoke produced you have to wonder about the environmental impact of so much burning.  There has been some discussion about this recently with the local EPA wanting to curtail people’s enthusiasm for burning incense and money. There also appears to be a decent trade in “counterfeit” ghost money from China. Definately not the right stuff! All this money burning is a popular topic amongst Taiwan bloggers. Wandering to Tamshui provides a review of the local paper money industry. The only Redhead in Taiwan recently mused about the EPA issue while Naruwan and Fili both recently discussed it. There is even a Facebook group devoted to people against ghost money.

There are lots of ghost money currencies for different deities and spirits. A single burning usually involves some gold and silver foiled as well as large and small plain notes.

As well as money there are of course the paper houses and incense sticks that add to the conflagration.

But what I like most about all the burning is the size and shape of the furnaces. They are such a motley collection.

You can buy a standard burner from your corner spiritual paraphernalia store.

Most are a stainless steel can with holes punched in the sides.

Popular are old washing machine tubs that are about the right size with holes pre-drilled.

Then there are the bigger stainless steel furnaces with irregular holes added.

Old 44 gallon (200litre) drums make a perfect furnace. Even when they are very old and very holey.

There are the Wizard of Oz Tin Man shaped burners.

Patched burners that should have been retired long ago.

Sometime just a ring of bricks do the job of containment

When someone passes away they need a huge sum of ghost money. That is when the purpose built mega-furnace is called in.

But if you just have more money than you know what to do with, set it in a ring on a spare patch of dirt.

Somehow, despite the EPA and non-beliver’s objections I can’t see things changing anytime soon. Taiwanese will keep sending thier money up in flames for some time to come.

Though Taiwan has experienced sixty incredible years of progress since this house was built, the architecture of house building has done nothing but regress. Sometime during the 50′s the ceramic tiled, steel reinforced concrete, multi-story terrace house was introduced. The ceramic tile size and colour has changed since then. But precious little else!

It is difficult to love the modern Taiwan house. They are irregularly shaped concrete lumps with rooftops covered in water tanks, TV aerials and ramshackle steel extensions. Tiles often fall off or are stained by rust welts or concrete ooze. Wiring, air-conditioning and clothe drying fixtures are half-heartily tacked on the sides. And when these additions inevitably fail, an equally poor replacement is attached without bother to remove the old. What’s more, they all leak!

But the old style houses have character. The external walls are made of small red bricks often partly rendered. Internal walls are made of large bamboo vertical and horizontal beams. Between these beams a course woven bamboo mat is placed , covered with mud and rendered with plaster. The roof beams are bamboo and the roof tiles are a dense pack of the classic red Chinese half shells. The roof line extends past the wall line to ensure rain does not seep through the rather porous red bricks. The floors are large red terracotta tiles and the main entry has dual heavy wooden doors, wooden hinged top and bottom and wooden bolted.

Here a similar house nearby has the brickwork ready for future side extensions that were never built. This three sided shape house facing a concrete courtyard is a very traditional rural Taiwanese style.

Other than the new wing, Uncle and Aunt’s house has had electrics and mosquito screens added since it was built. But otherwise, it is still in its original functional form. As a living room wedding photo taken in front of the house in a different era proudly shows, this was the golden age of house building in Taiwan.

As you can see a fire is built in a hole and the heat is stored in the soil and a chimney of clay boulders. Once everything is hot enough the fire is removed, the food placed in and the whole lot is covered in earth. It is left to cook for an hour or so and then unearthed. The food is delicious.

We cooked eggs, corn, chicken and sweet potatoes. The eggs were packed in the centre of mud balls, then placed like bricks into the hole, the corn and sweet potatoes were in aluminium foil and the chicken well wrapped and packed with some type of leaves that gave the meat a lovely flavour. The style is very similar to the Maori Hangi but clay boulders are used instead of rocks.

There was lots of other food as well as the obligatory oolong tea ceremony.

There was a game of baseball, lots of running in the dirt and then wheel borrow races.

For young and not-so-young.

It was a wonderful day and fondly reminded me of the big family picnics we used to go to out in the country of Western Australia. Lots of kids, lots of food, lots of fun.

See more photos from the family day out here

If you click on any picture you should see a slide show of all the pictures in full resolution.

Because it was Chinese New Year, so did a lot of other families. In fact, it seemed like all the families in Taiwan were there!

Other than the smothering crowds, the day out was a wonderful people watching event. The weather was quite cool over the Chinese new year. This allowed everyone to put on all their new clothes and dress their kids to the nines. And whole families were out. It is great to watch three generations enjoying a day out together.

Yoyo TV is the Taiwan cable TV kids channel. It contains lots of local content as well as a pile of international programs. One of the more popular at the moment is Sponge Bob Square Pants. It also runs Thomas the Tank engine. Rev W. V. Awdry would be thrilled to see that Taiwanese kids have taken up his creation as enthusiastically as any.

There was plenty of food including these small whole roasted birds. (Not chickens)

And it was a photo taking day. It is true that the advent of digital cameras has resulted in 10 times more photos in people’s collections. It also means that an events such as these there is a pretty high camera to people ratio. And everyone loves photos of the family.

These battery powered bikes with off centre front wheels were popular. Located just in front of the mens!

It is now possible to get really good fresh coffee everywhere. Many years ago that was nigh on impossible. Thank goodness for the coffee stand!

If you click on any picture you should see a slide show of all the pictures in full resolution.