Day 13: Taroko Hotel - Baiyang Trail
In the morning, Mr. Zeng, the owner of the hotel, sent us up the mountain. When I arrived in Hualien yesterday, I was really enlightened. When we came to a hotel in the heavy rain, the waiter said that it was full, but we clearly saw on Ctrip that there were still vacancies. Her Chinese was not good enough to communicate, so she called and spoke English to invite the boss over. The boss came and said that Ctrip had released her home information privately, and the accuracy was not high, and she had been complaining recently. Now is the peak season, there are very few vacant houses at the foot of Taroko Mountain, and there must be no rooms nearby. But the owner was very enthusiastic to help us find a house in the nearby old street, and even helped us call a taxi. After arriving in Lao Cai, the house is satisfactory, but the waiter can only speak English. It made me and my wife confused. Does this place want to be independent? Young people don't speak Chinese anymore?
Chatting with Mr. Zeng along the way, I realized that the waiter yesterday was the son brought by the newlywed wife. Now that he is on vacation, he will take a look at the store temporarily. Intermarriage between Hualien and Southeast Asia is very common. They got married last year. Their wife is Vietnamese. Their son works part-time at an English school here. His income is much higher than that in Vietnam.
The hotel we stayed in on the mountain this time was the most expensive we have these days, but it is worth the money. First of all, the architecture here is very national style. The national hero of the Taroko people is Haruk Nawei, who was earlier than Bidi Kebale. At the beginning of the last century, he led the uprising and killed dozens of Japanese devils. His statue stood guard in front of the gate.
The totem of this nation is an earthen pig. There are various pig decorations along the way and inside and outside the house. There are all kinds of statues of different sizes and cute cartoon images, all of which are meticulous and exquisite. And this year is the Year of the Pig, which is more in line with Chinese culture. The hotel is built in a mountain depression, surrounded by mountains and green trees, and clouds are floating at a height of 20 to 30 meters above. The rooms are all ethnic-style large wooden houses with a Japanese-style layout inside, and the facilities and sanitary conditions are very good. What was even more surprising was that there were still many monkeys running through the trees behind the house, but the monkeys were very conscious and never appeared in the hotel yard. There is a spacious and flat lawn in the yard, which is the world of butterflies. The butterflies here should be mainly phoenix-tailed butterflies, which come in all colors and are colorful, flying freely under the blue sky.
After storing our luggage here in the morning, we continued to go up the mountain. This time, our goal was the legendary Baiyang Trail. The local road system is quite complete. We can take a bus across the mountains to the Tianxiang transfer station on the top of the mountain, and then walk along the road for a short distance, and we found the entrance of Baiyang Trail in the corridor of the road. It is said that the government originally wanted to use the water from the waterfall to build a hydropower station here, but after the experiment, it felt that it was not possible and gave up. The narrow road is suitable for walking, and it is the closest road leading to the waterfall viewing, so it has been developed into a tourist attraction.
Go through the cave a few hundred meters first, which is very cool. The distances are marked every short distance on the side of the trail, and the end point is about 2.5 kilometers away. Looking at the progress of the kilometers makes people look forward to walking. There are small observation decks and gazebos on the road, and little monkeys gather on the stone benches to chat. When people get close, they will go up to the railing next to them and stare at you, as if reminding you to occupy them. Territory until people leave.
We stopped and walked along the way, crossing mountains and ridges. When we reached the end, there was a fork. On the left, we could see a waterfall like a jade belt. Rumble. We can pass a suspension bridge across the mountains to reach the large viewing platform on another mountain. It is very lively here, and there is an endless stream of people watching and taking pictures. We found a cool place to take a nap and it was very comfortable.
The road on the right at the end of the road is the famous Shuilian Cave. We passed through the wet cave of tens of meters again, and the mountains became more spacious, and there was a constant stream of tourists, which was very lively. In the pool in front, there is a road made of flat stones, leading to a deeper black hole in front, which is the Water Curtain Cave belonging to the Monkey King. On the stone wall at the entrance of the cave, there are raincoats left by the tourists in front to dry, which can be worn repeatedly, and the staff are cleaning up the debris. When I stepped on the stone road and walked into the cave entrance, I felt the cool spring water flowing through the stones under my feet, so I wanted to try to wade upstream from the spring water into the cave, but it froze in less than a minute, and the water was so icy biting! There is a stone road on the side of the cave, which is not wide but very flat, and everyone walks in file. The spring water on the top of the mountain seeps down from countless stone crevices, forming a piece of water curtain, which hits the stone wall in the cave with a crackling sound, but the feeling of hitting the body is not cold at all, but it is a bit like a massage. The best summer experience.
The buffet at the hotel in the evening is great. There is ample supply of all kinds of mountain delicacies, cooked in a very Western style, delicious and delicious.
The highlight of the show is the folk performance, which everyone enjoyed very much. Let me briefly say:
1. Everyone gathers at the door to welcome the hero back. Today, Dongsen TV made an adventure program, and found a local, a Brazilian and an American to come here to experience the life of the ancient Taroko people. Several "warriors" wore "savage" costumes and recorded a program on a tree for a day, and they were already hungry. During the whole ceremony, he made a forced laugh at the camera, and after showing himself to the camera, he went to the back for dinner. And I heard from the boss that the American was still wearing Amis costumes, so he went to the wrong place, right?
2. The performance of local ethnic musical instruments. I don't remember the name of the musical instrument. One is to hit three or four horizontal wooden sticks, which has a sense of rhythm. The next instrument is to pull the rhythm with the rope between the planks, which sounds similar to hitting a wooden stick. The performer is the chef of our shop, and he also designed a quiz with prizes. He played the rhythm and asked everyone to guess the title of the song. All the songs he played were world famous nursery rhymes, all of which were guessed by foreigners.
3. Although there are only a dozen or so actors, dancing with the sound of primitive war drums is quite imposing. The dance that impressed me the most is: the mighty god is watching them from behind. Cut it off, wave it around with the false head and offer it to the gods. I thought my daughter would be scared, but I didn't expect her daughter to look at Haha, and the host came over and asked her if she knew what it was waving? She said it was cotton.
4. In the restaurant, except for the boss who is Han, the rest are all Taroko, and all of them are Christians. The local area was originally relatively closed, and the people of the ethnic group were not very good at learning culture, so they were engaged in physical work, and they were dissatisfied with the government after a long time. Later, the government gave them some support policies, so the Han boss came here to open this restaurant around 2003 with the missionary nature. The staff here were originally children who went to school nearby. In the school, they sang, danced and played musical instruments. These are compulsory courses. The children have grown up under the care of the boss over the years, and they are multi-skilled, and they are capable of cooking, keeping accounts, cleaning and performing. Every evening, the boss chartered a car to pick up some people to perform, and then sent them back at night. According to the age, each performance has an income of about RMB 50-100. This restaurant is now the place with the largest proportion of western tourists on the island. It has a good interaction with the local villagers and has become an indispensable part of the local people.
