The Quest for Umbrellas

A few weekends ago we decided we needed a traditional Chinese paper umbrella, as you do, and so set of for Meinong, a village of mostly Hakka people (originally from the South of Mainland China) famous for its umbrellas.

Sadly they don't make umbrellas with hidden swords like this

We'd been there and in the general direction several times before since it's in the same direction as Maolin. We went the usual way of just heading out west from Tainan towards the mountains, but once we started entering the foothills we saw a sign for a "mudstone" area or something, and decided to follow it. Later we realised we'd turned too early, but the turning we took lead up a small, dilapidated, very steep road through farms. We followed a different set of signs pointing to "Cao Shan 308 Gao", which we discovered was the top of a mountain ridge.

Entrance to the restaurant on top of the mountain

Right where the road levels out is a really cool garden restaurant with a great view overlooking the coastal plain - you can make out what we reckon was probably Tainan. Closer there are some other small foot hills and the weird, semi-desert, rocky landscape of "Moonworld" - a tourist attraction we have yet to visit but that we imagine involves moon buggies and is apparently famous for it's chicken. 

As well as the view, there's also a nice little playground including a purple horse ride, a garden with various animals such as geese, rabbits, dogs and squirrels (pet ones that is), karaoke (of course) and rustic though anatomically explicit indications for the toilet made from wood (sorry, didn't get around to taking photos). Only one area was open when we went, but it looked like in busier times there would be plenty of space.

The restaurant mainly served hot pot, but also some other expensive though very tasty looking dishes such as san bei ji. To start with we just had a coffee (pretty good) and sat admiring the view and watching a food journalist run around taking photos of everything, but it was so nice we decided to eat lunch. Though tempted by the live fish swimming in tanks, we weren't that hungry so settled for some hot pot. We chose the pumpkin one, and it was very good, though it's hard to go wrong with hot pot.

Half man, half bird, all kungfu

From the mountain top we headed down towards Neimen through a bamboo forest until we came to a  temple. The reliefs on the wall around it made it obvious that this was a kungfu temple, complete with a separate building housing a small exhibition of kungfu weapons and photos from a festival that's held there every year sometime in the second lunar month. 

Inside the temple it was fairly similar to most temples, though maybe with more fighting scenes, and a nice garden and pond or moat out the back. Back on the normal road, we now understood why there were kungfu statues along that stretch. 

Ice in Cishan

In a wide valley the other side of this first lot of mountains is the town of Qishan (Cishan on most signs). Many people don't seem to bother stopping here on their way to Maolin, Meinong, etc., but it has a really cool old street lined with Japanese colonial buildings, some really old temples and restored railway station (but not trains). We stopped there for ice with about ten flavours of ice cream in one scoop and about as many extra things (beans, jellies and so on).

The most convenient bridge across the river was still down from Typhoon Morakot, so we had to go along a bit to cross. It's a really long bridge, and the view from it, of Qishan backed by hills, the wide river and sheer mountains on the other side, is pretty impressive.

Rather than go straight to Meinong, since we had the whole afternoon we decided to go for a drive up the valley of another river towards Maolin. First it was through bamboo and forest, then after another really long bridge with supports shaped like butterfly wings took us to the opposite side small towns and villages amongst farmland. Big mountains loomed out of the mist and dark clouds the whole time, but it didn't rain. The big flat valley in the middle seemed to be from lots of rivers, low on water at the moment but you could still see a lot of damage from typhoons, so they must get pretty swollen.

Next we headed back to Meinong, stopping at one of the tourist areas they've set up. These look like a very fake mini-village, but are quite fun. Here is were you can eat traditional Hakka flat rice noodles and other dishes, buy souvenirs and make lei cha (擂茶 - pounded tea, see wikipedia for more). Lei cha is a type of tea: you get given your pot of tea, a big stone pestle and mortar, and a bunch of ingredients - sesame seeds, puffed rice, peanuts etc. - which you grind up, put some spoonfuls in your cup, at tea and you have lei cha - it's a bit like drinking cereal. We tried it last time, but didn't get round to it the second time.

Sunset in Meinong

These places are also where you come to buy paper umbrellas. There's a whole range of sizes from cocktail ones to some big enough to cover a table, and different paintings on them - most are flowers, landscapes or a little scene. The salespeople are generally happy for you to spend ages looking at different ones to find one you like, or if you have the time and skill you can paint one yourself, send it back to them and they will wax it for you, though we decided not to bother for now. Apparently they are waterproof, but it's probably best not to test them in a typhoon.

Fully stocked on flat noodles and waxed paper souvenirs, as there were still a few hours of light left we went on a search for Yellow Butterfly Valley. There are signs, but you follow them and come to intersections with no signs, so it a bit of a mission. We persevered through old town, catching glimpses of old houses behind the usual modern Taiwanese concrete blocks, then out into the countryside and towards the mountains

 We did get the occasional sign telling us we were heading in the right direction, but once we were getting close we followed some misleading signs and ended up at a disused hot spring. It looked like it would have been nice when it was running, with different pools spread out in a garden, but hadn't been open for a good while.

It was getting late so we decided we don't like butterflies that much and headed back, getting some awesome sunset views with the mountains reflecting in rice paddies. They trip back seemed pretty long though, especially for the person on the back, it kills the front of your legs.

Sally with our umbrella