Exploring Taiwan’s Southern Tip (En Voyage)

If beach capers are the be-all and end-all of your vacation, it makes sense to minimize the time spent getting from Taiwan’s second city to its premier seaside resort. But if your interests are broader and you’ve access to a hire car, you’ll discover a region that makes for a wonderful multi-day road trip.

Expressway 88 and Freeway 3 allow a rapid escape from Kaohsiung and its suburbs - but also bypass the intriguing destinations of Donggang and Jiadong...

This article, which also appeared in the December issue of EVA Air's inflight magazine, goes on to mention Donggang’s bluefin tuna and boat-burning festival, Jiadong’s superb Hakka mansion, Mount Lilong, Longluan Lake, the beach resort at the heart of Kenting National Park, and the Alangyi Ancient Trail. The photo above, which I took in 2010, shows Longpan Park in the southeastern part of Kenting National Park. 

Taiwan's aboriginal food (En Voyage)

More than nine-tenths of Taiwan’s population is of Han Chinese descent, yet the island’s indigenous minorities (537,000 out of a total population of 23.4 million) have managed to preserve many of their Austronesian traditions. Aboriginal languages are still spoken in remote mountain villages, and indigenous festivals delight foreign and domestic tourists. What is more, aboriginal cuisines are quite different to the Chinese-influenced fare usually eaten in Taiwan.
 
In the mountains that dominate Taiwan’s interior, aboriginal people traditionally lived by snaring and trapping wild animals and gathering wild greens utterly unlike the vegetables usually grown in the lowlands. These days, very few indigenous lives are untouched by modernity, but hunting and foraging habits still influence what aboriginal people eat. Mountain boar is leaner than domesticated pig; other succulent meats include muntjac and wild dove. What members of the Bunun tribe (one of 16 Austronesian ethnic groups recognized by Taiwan's government) call bubunu resembles a nettle, but when cooked in a soup it can ease a hangover. Bunun women learn from their mothers how to distinguish the nutritious balangbalang from a similar but poisonous plant. Rather than rice, taro and millet are the carbohydrates of choice.
 
Big-city restaurants run by indigenous people rely on family connections to source ingredients. As you might expect, aboriginal food is easiest to find in those parts of Taiwan with substantial indigenous populations, such as around the famous mountain resort of Alishan. In the eastern counties of Hualien and Taitung, where over a quarter of residents are indigenous...

This is one of two articles I wrote for the December issue of En Voyage, the inflight magazine of EVA Air. It appears on pages 32 and 33; the entire magazine is online. The photo, which I took earlier this year, show Bunun dishes at a restaurant in Kaohsiung City's Namasia District.

Quoted in New York Times

New York Times' writer Adam H. Graham quotes me in his just-published piece, Taiwan, an Island of Green in Asia. Mr. Graham contacted me by email back in September and graciously mentions that I authored the Bradt guidebook to Taiwan.