Bridges

This morning I got up early to do something I hadn't done in a while - go for a long ride on my scooter with a group of people. From our meeting point in downtown Fengyuan 豊原, my friends Michael and Roddick, along with Michael's friends Drew, Augustin and his charming wife Chou, plus yours truly, took off on four scooters (and in one car). We went through the town of Dongshih 東勢, up into the hills and past the Liyutan Reservoir, and finally down to the site of the Longteng Broken Bridge, located in the town of Sanyi 三義. From the parking lot near the site of the viaduct ruins, we started to walk along the abandoned railway tracks:

Eventually, we came to a 726 meter-long (2382 feet) tunnel, which served to remind me that I had neglected to bring along a flashlight:

 

Emerging from the tunnel, we saw our first crowds of the day as we came to the old Shengsing Station 勝興, part of the former Western Trunk Line 旧山線. Built in 1911 to reflect Shengsing village's role as a center of the camphor oil industry, it was once the highest train station in Taiwan, sitting at an altitude of 402 meters (1319 feet). Originally named Shi Liu Fen 十六分, Shengsing Station was shut down in 1998 with the completion of a new Taichung Line 台中線. There are other, arguably more attractive old train stations in Taiwan dating from the Japanese era, but Shengsing has been discovered by the weekend tourist hordes, and the street in front of the station was full of souvenir shops and Hakka 客家 restaurants, not to mention thirsty Westerners on the lookout for Taiwan Beer:

After the beer break, we headed back towards our parked scooters (and car), only this time walking on the road instead of on the train tracks. According to one of my guidebooks, the distance between the station and the viaduct is 6 kilometers (3.7 miles), though it didn't seem that far to me. Before getting on our scooters, I took a couple of pictures of the broken bridge. Constructed in 1905, it was destroyed in an earthquake in 1935, and the picturesque ruins are all that remain today. There was a time when the Long Deng Viaduct was unknown (along with Sheng Shing station), but in the wake of the leisure boom that took off in Taiwan with the introduction of the five-day work week in the early part of this decade, it has become a local icon:

Saying "adieu" to Sanyi, we headed in the same direction as we had come, stopping off in the town of Jhuolan 卓蘭 to have lunch. Much to the amusement of Augustin, we ate at a place that called itself Rive Gauche (the Left Bank). The food was hardly French, but it was surprisingly good (and inexpensive). And, yes, more Taiwan Beer was consumed. My standards are definitely slipping!

Back in Fengyuan in the mid-afternoon, it was time to for everyone to part. Perhaps inspired by the ruins in Sanyi, before heading home, I once again rode out to the Tachia River 大甲渓 to see if I could get a look at the collapsed Houfeng Bridge. This time I was able to find a dirt track that led directly down to the riverbank (and under the bridge itself, a worrisome proposition), where I was able to get a good look at the destruction from last weekend's Typhoon Sinlaku:

I wasn't the only one out there this afternoon looking at these ruins, but this was one sight I hope never becomes a tourist attraction.

From this morning's Taipei Times, a newspaper not as good as the China Post (unless you like your news to be factual and unbiased!):

Peng tells details of escape from KMT 

"Democracy pioneer Peng Ming-min 彭明敏 and those who helped him escape the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) 中国国民党 regime in 1970 to seek political asylum in Sweden gave detailed accounts of the well-planned journey at a press conference in Taipei 台北 yesterday."

It's an interesting article of how one of Taiwan's foremost proponents of democracy during the martial law era was able to escape to Sweden, and eventually to the USA, with the help of two Japanese nationals, who were both present at Saturday's press conference. That's just the kind of interference by Japanese colonialists in Chinese domestic affairs that boils the blood of any true blue KMT die hard!