OPINION: Extending the HSR to Hualien Risks Spoiling East Taiwan

Taiwan retains something truly special on its east coast. It would be a shame to lose it in a rush towards development.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/09/04
By: Matt Dagher Margosian

Credit: Matt Dagher Margosian

The following article is contributed in response to suggestions from Taiwan’s Minister of Transport and Communications, Wu Hong-mo (吳宏謀), that the national high-speed rail (HSR) network could be extended eastwards to Hualien on the country’s relatively isolated east coast.

I live up high in an apartment building in Yilan County, northeast Taiwan. From large bay windows looking out into the countryside, you can see small concrete houses bobbing like seagulls among an ocean of rice fields. Beyond them lies the Zhongyang Mountain Range (also known as the Central Mountain Range), where clouds form in the morning over the peaks, like pillows enveloping the heads of lazy sleepers.

This natural beauty is endearingly contrasted by the intimate mosaic of my neighbors: Kids — two to a bicycle — cycling to school and laughing gossip back and forth; local breakfast restaurants, opened out of people’s homes, which supplement Yilan’s single McDonald’s; and elderly men and women checking their rice fields for pests as nearby egrets assist by devouring snails and locusts.

The scenery reminds me of Dali, in China’s Yunnan Province, where I used to live and work. Rather than an ocean of rice fields, my home there looked out onto the alpine beauty of Erhai Lake.    [FULL  STORY]

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