Taidong - Mom's heaven
Taidong is one of Mom's favorite places on earth. It's a beautiful place uniquely situated between the pacific ocean and the Central mountain range where both are easily accessible. It's home to 7 of the 14-15 aboriginal races in Taiwan, one of which gave birth to Taiwanese baseball in the village of Hongye.
Mom traveled to Taidong in her early 20's to teach at a middle school and fell in love with the small fishing town. Her aunt lived there with their five boys and her uncle, always wanting a girl, welcomed her with open arms. Her uncle was a fisherman and his sons too. One of them runs the family fishing supply store there and hosted us during our stay. He summed up Taidong best when speaking of the schools there. They're not top ranked schools and may not teach all the test taking tricks and tactics at other schools, but they teach kids how to be happy. They do a fantastic job of that! Mom's aunt and all her sons are of the happiest people I know. They're easing going people who are always smiling and joking around.
A lesson in natural history
My uncle was a fantastic tour guide of the area. He's been training to be a certified tour guide and volunteering at the newly built museum of natural history.
Taidong is a geological wonder. The Central mountain range was formed by plate movement between the Eurasia and Philippines. The browns of part of the mountain range are remnants made of a different type of dirt and unlike most mountains in Taiwan, are not able to grow any vegetation.
Verene had a blast in the museum running around the big open display rooms. I was a bit surprised how child-proof the museum was as it wasn't too cluttered and the displays were not easily accessible for little Verene.
There was a hallway that joined two exhibits in the museum with a glass floor. The floor highlighted mini displays a couple feet deep that visitors could see as they walked through. The idea was clever and certainly drew the attention of Verene. She was running at 100mph towards whatever caught her attention until she saw the floor change. The glass see-through floor was something new and she didn't know if she could trust her weight to it even though she saw us walk on it. She stood at the edge of the cement floor looking to the glass floor with a perplexed look before extending one foot out to lightly tap the glass. Yes, it was solid. After repeating the exercise a few times, she took mini baby steps onto the glass as if walking on ice. After her first step, she stood still for a moment questioning if the next step would be safe. After a moment of processing, she started to move again - right foot out for a step, drag the left foot until it was square with the right and repeat. She eventually worked her way up to full steps and made it safely across the glass.
Aboriginals and baseball
The other highlight of our trip to Taidong was visiting aboriginal villages - especially the birthplace of Taiwanese little league baseball. In 1968 the Hongye Elementary School team surprised the nation to win the national championships. They were a nobody team from a small aboriginal mountain village that went on to play the older, better funded, and more experienced Japanese team to beat them in a series 7:0 and 5:2. With meager means, the team started their baseball passion by carving their own bats and using stones as balls! Check out the black and white picture below. I love the expression on the catcher's face - he must have been the last kid picked on the team to play catcher with his bare hands with stones used as rocks. We happened to catch the current team practicing on the same field when we visited.
More nature in Taidong
The rest of our time in Taidong was spent hiking around a couple beach and a small island off of one of them connected by a bridge. In the days before the bridge, my uncle and other fishermen would make the trek to the island during low tide, fish, and come back before the tides washed away their way home. If they forgot the time while fishing and missed the low tide land bridge back home, they would have to wait another 6-8 hours for the tide to recede. I imagine "Mom, I'm 8 hours late because I missed the low tide" was a common excuse for kids to stay out late!
On occasion we would see farmer's fields planted with flowers sometimes as they would plant them to bring different nutrients back to the ground in off seasons. In Hualian, the government even paid them with cheap fertilizer or other incentives to make the city more attractive for tourists.
Taidong is famous for it's hot springs but unfortunately we didn't have the time scheduled for spending a good afternoon in one. Mary happened to think the 15 minutes we had before heading back to our train station was sufficient to change into her bathing suit, run down to the hot springs off the side of the river, dry off, change, and make it back in time. She was the only one quick enough to make the quick jot and enjoyed soaking in natural hot springs for a couple minutes while the rest of us looked at her. I think she definitely got more out of it than we did!
