Take a high speed train to Taichung, a 50 minute highway drive east, through a few tunnels across a hilly region, you are there.
A quiet little farming valley surrounded by a university, a Buddhist pyramid, and a Christian church.
On September 21, 1999, a 7.7 earthquake epicentered 20 miles from here shook the ground, took 180 lives and shattered hundreds of buildings. A massive community redevelopment project to rebuild and remold the town to a more eco-friendly environment soon started. One fruit of the project is an eco-garden that features a "Frog Museum" and a "Paper Dome" built with cardboard tubes.
A Foreign Literature Department professor from the University nearby decided to contribute to the humanity element of the community by opening up a bookstore with bed-and-breakfast services seven years ago. It has since provided a safe hangout for local kids and comfortable accommodation for international travelers/bird-watchers all year round.
A Foreign Literature Department professor from the University nearby decided to contribute to the humanity element of the community by opening up a bookstore with bed-and-breakfast services seven years ago. It has since provided a safe hangout for local kids and comfortable accommodation for international travelers/bird-watchers all year round.
Besides lending floors to seminars and speeches, the bookstore organizes art festivals/contests and displays their works along lanes and alleys–the "village walls", morphing arts into the everyday life of the locals.
It is here where the geographical center of Taiwan is located.
Some say it's the feng-shui (a lotus shaped basin), some say the magnetic fields (spiritual vortexes), the town boasts the highest Buddhist/Taoist temple density in the country and has been the center of the once-every-twelve-years religious festivals for over 120 years. Even the mural at a local restaurant's restroom gives advice on Zen meditation 
Renowned for its fine water, a wine factory has long been in operation here since early Japanese colonial days. Its Shaoxing Wine (η΄Ήθι ), a remake of a name brand rice wine from mainland China, had been festivity favorites for decades before foreign imports took over the markets.
A former political prisoner turned organic farmer who built a farming enterprise that supplies over 800 stores over the island shared his life stories with us and gave us his freshly written calligraphy as a parting gift for our two-day trip to this unique little town in central Taiwan.
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