In Hualien, it’s gorges

Hualien welcomed us, on a soggy gray day, with all the pageantry of a ghost town. After a three-hour train ride to the east-coast city, we were hungry, and our search for food – in entirely the wrong side of town – was turning up nothing.

We passed by a lone mochi shop, whose staff members, upon seeing actual pedestrians in front of their store, launched into a fully synchronized rhyme and hokey pokey hocking their mashed-rice goods – a Hualien specialty.
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But we weren’t about to make a lunch of gift-box mochi. A guide at the visitor center sent us in the direction of real nourishment, toward the city’s arterial shopping street, Zhongshan Road* (中山路), where drink stands, restaurants, fashion boutiques, and more mochi shops jostle for prime positioning.

There we found Wang Ji (王記茶鋪), a tea house and architectural standout, but more importantly, a warm refuge from the rain. Wang Ji had fairly priced meals for a tea house, but their generous portions and first-class flavors were what really won us over. After extended walking in the rain, the food was a much needed reprieve, considering what would come shortly after as we explored the city: a lot more walking in the rain.

The next day, the early sun brought tidings of a better day to be out. We caught a quick breakfast at Sarlee’s, a charming organic bakery/cafe that has a few locations in the area. Later, after being continually hassled by a taxi driver to take his one-man tour of Taroko Gorge, we got on a bus that took us to Taroko’s Tianxiang (天祥) for a fraction of the cabbie’s price.

We climbed the pagoda at Xiangde Temple (祥德寺), where the world’s highest bodhisattva statue is said to stand. We stepped tentatively through a neverending tunnel, whose blackness was interrupted by only a distant pinpoint of light . We watched a Taroko (local aboriginal) woman on a scooter zoom along the Baiyang Trail (白楊步道), unfazed by steep dropoffs and paths slicked with rain water.

After Tianxiang we were too exhausted for anything else. We rewarded ourselves with Hualien mochi, then said goodbye to the city with another meal at Wang Ji.

*Hualien romanizes its place names using Tongyong Pinyin, if not some other alphabet concoction. For names whose English spellings aren’t already well established, I’ll stick with Hanyu Pinyin romanization.

Flickr: more pictures of Taroko Gorge.