I don’t think about mountains much at home in the UK.
In Taiwan, I think about them a lot. They’re right there, though they aren’t what most people associate with the place, I think.
Taiwan is shaped by mountains.
It’s a leaf at the edge of the pacific, twisted a little in the water so the spine is off-centre, and the spine is rugged. So the mountains make the land what it is, and in many ways human society what it is, too.
Obstacles
Some of the places I like most in Taiwan are down the east coast. It’s different on that side of the island. Slower, more traditional, less built-up.
And that’s because those places are hard to get to.
There are very few routes across the island from one side to the other. The broad western plain is where everything happens, where the high speed rail runs from north to south, where the people are, where industry is. Then the mountains rise, down the length of the island’s leaf shape, and to get to the strip down the east, you mostly have to take a long detour around them or through the few passages across if the weather (past or present) permits.
In the bulk of the country, you can go where you like, do as you like. It’s a free country and a very enabling one. Unless you want to go across it. Then you can’t. The mountains are there.
Beauty
One of the reasons many people would go to the east coast if it was easier is the ocean. The coast facing the open Pacific is amazing. Beautiful, balmy, with (I’m told) the best surfing people haven’t heard of.
I’m not a beach person myself. I prefer forests and, yes, mountains. Mountains are awe-inspiring.
But the spectacular thing about Taiwan’s east is that it mixes all of those. Mountains rise from the edge of the sea, almost, gaining grandeur from the contrast and making the sea more beautiful in return. The roads and railway lines that snake along the almost impossible line between the two provide some of the most stunning scenery you’ll find.
It’s similar in many areas of Taiwan. You don’t have to go far, and the mountains are there, a backdrop you’d pay to have installed, not looming but standing confidently among mists and clouds.
Take the little twisty roads into the mountains and there’s a magical mix of the rural and the untamed. Here, an area sculpted into an artful balance of geometry and freedom by the growing of tea. There, the frozen green explosions of bamboo as though an organic artillery strike has peppered a slope. The mountains are green, not grey, vigorously so.
And yet the views are as awesome as the craggy precipices elsewhere. There’s nothing quite like looking out from way up a mountain, across folds of landscape with a sea of cloud breaking against the vegetation below.
Challenge
My brother-in-law has a photo in pride of place, of him and a group of friends at the peak of Mt Jade, Yu Shan.
Taiwan is a modern, convenient, place. And yet getting to the top of Yu Shan is still something to celebrate. It’s the highest peak in the region, higher than Mt Fuji, nearly 4000m above sea level – and on an island, sea level isn’t too far away, so the elevation is dramatic. The whole area is a national park, dedicated wilderness, and popular with climbers and hikers, but even so it takes dedication to go all the way to the top.
Mountains, of course, are famous for conquering “because they’re there”. A summit is visible, taunting little humans, appearing to ask if we’re capable. And so people are drawn to the challenge of proving they can get there.
There are more mundane challenges, though.
Whenever I’m in Taiwan, I’m struck by the continuous effort it takes to keep things working and the roads open. Chunks of road slip off mountainsides, or are buried under landslides. Trees and rocks block them. Bridges are damaged. The mountains are unforgiving and magnify the weather (and earthquakes), and I don’t recall a trip where I didn’t see some major works going on up where even getting the machinery there feels a major achievement. Can humanity win against nature up in the mountain regions? They can, but it’s a continual battle, never done.
Yet at the same time, the mountains provide an area where other questions can be tested. Taiwan is tropical, and many things grow, as they say, like Topsy. But there are foods that need cooler conditions. Things like apples can be grown up in the higher places. And the tea from the high slopes is renowned in the parts of the world most serious about tea. Over time, the Taiwanese have used the mountains to see what can be done there that can’t be done elsewhere.
Protection
As I write, it’s typhoon season.
Last week, for several days, the news was full of the projected path of a typhoon. It was going north. Then it wasn’t. Eventually it was heading straight over where we are, full force.
Except it wasn’t full force, because we’re on the West. Those lovely towns and little cities on the east coast take the full force, then the mountains. By the time the typhoon gets to us, it’s a shadow of what it was. Serious rain, high winds, but not the destructive terror that it would be if the wall of mountains wasn’t there.
The bulk of Taiwan is sheltered by those mountains, as well as shaped by them.
As are numerous unique species of wildlife and vegetation, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth, but would have been wiped out if all of Taiwan was as accessible as the western plain. The mountains are a refuge where even bears can still survive.
And as a country that has climbed from poverty and authoritarianism within living memory, and is now rich enough to care about the environment, Taiwan can now be very grateful that vast tracts of mountainous landscapes were too tough to exploit when people cared less than they now do.
Mountains
I could go on. As I say, I think about the mountains a lot when I’m here.
But the key thing is that all these are human perspectives. The mountains don’t care. The mountains just ARE.
The mountains will be there whatever I think of them, and whatever anyone thinks of them. So I can be positive, or negative, and it doesn’t matter at all, except to me.
And that might be the biggest lesson I can learn from them, because a lot of life is like that. Just less majestically.