Alishan, the Forest Railway and the Old Street of Fenqihu

Empires come armed with explorers, geographers, map-makers, ethnologists and anthropologists, or should I say, the latter arrive first as harbingers of empire to follow in their wake: empires of guns, germs, and steel, yes, but more so, the empires of mind.

Japanese ethnographers who scouted the plains and mountains of Taiwan divided the people they met, the tribes they encountered, into the “raw” and the “cooked”. Those who were willing to work with the new arrivals, learn their ways and become joints and extensions in the tentacles of the unifying polity were cooked, that is to say palatable.

The label of “raw” was applied to those who lived deeper in the mountains, and wished to preserve their way of life, and more importantly, save their land and forests and refused to be gobbled up, unlike their cooked counterparts.

There is no need to go out with a torchlight looking for the raw and the cooked. More than numbers in a statistician’s census, they are so many aspects of the poly-psychic makeup of a man caught up in the dichotomies of the mind.

Towards the last couple of days of the lunar new year holidays (春節), my friend and I leave Taipei to visit Alishan, in the mountainous township that is home to the highest peak on the Island, the Jade Mountain.

Gao Tie arrives at Chiayi HSR station. High-speed demands more or less straight tracks with few curves or bends, leaving the stations at a distance from the old city center. We hop on a bus to take us into the town, near the old railway station. Strolling by the markets, we pause at a busy joint and have rice with turkey?

My friend pops a motion sickness pill in anticipation of the bus journey ahead. Opposite the Railway station entrance, and next to the bus stop, an old man guides waiting passengers onto the right bus. Whenever someone shows initiative and tries to queue minutes before arrival, or looks for his bus on the digital display, he barks at them, cowering them into retreat.

For the twenty minutes or so that we wait for the bus, he keeps us entertained and, more importantly, on our feet lest we become unwitting victims of his reprimand. Perhaps the fact that we look like foreigners restrains him somewhat from meeting us with the same treatment as others.

As if to ensure impartiality, he walks over to us, murmurs a question about our destination. He tells us the bus should be here soon and reassuringly walks away. The gathering of waiting passengers steal a glance at each other. There is no way, they seem to be saying to each other, that he works for the public transit system. And yet, no one seems to have encountered someone like him who takes his made-up occupation so seriously.

Few moments dislodge the spirit from the body as a journey with breathtaking views. Head leaning on the window, I gaze intently at grassy hillsides and forests that change bark and leaf with elevation changes. When the woods fall in the way of sunlight, like nature's beloved samurais, they splinter it into a thousand bits before sending chops of photon beams our way, lighting up an eye here, an eyebrow there, before the bus swerves with the road and we arrive on the shady side of the mountain.

Of the many metaphors used to suggest the meaning of Yin and Yang, the sunny and shady sides of a mountain are perhaps the closest, the most accessible to experience. Where the Sun shines, one basks and blooms; where the shade prevails, one curls up and shelters like a silkworm in a cocoon.

After an hour’s journey or so, the bus pulls into Fenqihu. Last beams of the setting sun paint the village and valley in stripes of crimson and darkening brown and green. We drag our luggage trolleys down to the hotel’s location. A queer silence pervades and we find no signs of another soul. Where the roads seem to end, what can a traveler do?

Thankfully, someone comes up and saves us from this existential question. Checking-in, up we go to the room, drop our stuff and re-emerge to take a walk through the town before night falls and envelops it in an impenetrable darkness, the kind that prevails where electricity and light bulbs are not yet ubiquitously unbearable.

Old town streets are empty

and lonely cats prowl

at the sight of two unexpected strangers.

Bulbous lanterns hang unlit

before closed shops and shuttered doors.

Four footsteps echo

pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pit-pat-pat-pit;

four furry paws pursue

hopping quietly from roof to roof,

their stealth betrayed and cover blown

by shadows cast

like looming foam.

By six o’clock, it seems the entire town as gone to sleep except for a café atop a hill facing the bus stop. Up there, we walk and find a table, order a few things, and before we know it, it is closing time. Right back we retrace our steps, and go down for the night, with a vague thought, to catch the bus to Alishan next day, that soon dissolves in the formaldehyde night, preserved like so many desires in the depths of the unconscious.

Rising early next morning, we find a bustling old street, second only to Jiufen, a marble plaque reads. We sip small cups of tea offered as tasters, and go into shops selling wares, walk further up a flight of stairs that opens up to railway tracks. A forest railway runs between Chiayi and Fenqihu and further up to Alishan, but the last big earthquake has blocked part of the route.

Overlooking valleys, we descend a trail to wooden stairs and platforms that snake through a cedar forest. The trees are so tall and the trunks so wide. We hug one from opposite sides, and our fingers barely touch.

Ah, what a joy,

to feel so minuscule

and pale in comparison;

a fading shade,

a ripple lost in a crashing wave.

Amidst those virgin cedar trees,

whose trunks rise ever so high

and pierce some distant sky,

I feel dizzy,

disembodied,

and become

a mere murmur,

in a musical encore.

At the appointed post-noon hour, we wait at the bus stop, for an hour, an hour more before we giggle and begin to inquire. Special holiday schedule and a change in the bus stop location mean we are told we are waiting at the wrong spot.

Guided afresh to the right spot, we walked the kilometer and a half to find our bus had long come and gone. There is one more bus in another hour but taking it would mean we would have no way to come back the same evening as we had planned.

So, resigning to our fate, we embrace another day in Fenqihu and set aside Alishan for some other day, for another time. Back in the old street, we window shop amidst the scent and flavors, of incense and sticky rice cooked in bamboo shoots.

Following the narrow railway tracks, we emerge into an opening, walk up to a local temple, an alcove within which a miniature mountain of incense burns. We bai bai (拜拜) thrice and prepare for our first rendezvous with the forest railway.

Built during the Japanese rule, the narrow-gauge forest railway runs through the mountains and valleys of Alishan with the sole intent and purpose to fell majestic trees, and turn their living spirit into dead lumber by hundreds of thousands, and transport them down to the shores to be shipped away to the metropoles. It is difficult to unsee the irony that what the “raw” had co-existed with for hundreds of years and known to be living, the “cooked” had deemed dead and chain sawed within years. The axe had convinced the woods it was their kin.

Metal roads hum and ring with the sounds of an approaching train. I hit record on my phone and place it on the tracks, the train passes right over it.

Spectacle over, we slow walk back through the town, bidding goodnight. A lone 7-Eleven stands, the first one, the only one, a sign reads at the door, within tens of kilometers on either side. It stays open until midnight.

By 7-Eleven's steps we sit,

watching the days business wrap itself.

A seller carries away his cart of unsold fruits,

some kid plays an invented game

in the dominion of shadows

under a streetlamp.

Soon the last footsteps echo

and fade

before our own begin

their march to the hotel bed,

into the embrace of sleep,

sweet guardian of the night.

Our final day in Fenqihu, we take one last gander through the town, through the shops. She buys a pair of wooden Japanese slippers. I purchase a cup of coffee too many; they are not up to the taste. She makes fun of my always eager and often idiotic spendthrift-ness.

Today, we take a bus to a nearby town to take the forest rail that we had witnessed yesterday as bystanders in giddiness. The wait is few good hours long, we walk up and down the tracks, peek inside some cafe and feast on a bowl of soup. We find our seat, are a little concerned that the windows are smudged.

It trundles along, to a town nearby, and stops to pickup more passangers. In unexpected surprise, that town is none other than Fenqihu where it halts for another hour. Pacing up and down the platform, we wipe our window clean with a Kleenex. Satisfied, we take our seats again, the train leaves Fenqihu, the place that was to be a sarai on the way to Alishan but became our destination.

The yellow train rumbles

down the hills

and up a slope:

coaches rattle,

shadows ripple,

tree-trunks blend

with brown earth

and thick foliage

with blurry pixel sky.

Eyelids hover,

half-awake

half-asleep,

breath flows in

and out

of a nowhereland

and dreams kiss the real

on its leafy lips

and we ride on the back

of the yellow dragon

breathing fire,

clearing a way,

forging a path,

swaying like a wave

through snaky mountainsides

somewhere in light and

elsewhere in shadows.

We never make it to Alishan. Now, the little that remains of the forests that had lived for thousands of years has been turned into a preserve, the forest railway no longer carries lumber but people a couple of times a day. If you happen to visit Fenqihu, go and hug the trunk of a cedar tree.