Human Flower Project

Monday, November 13, 2006

Go ‘Caoling’ in November

The hills of northeastern Taiwan are shining with awn flowers, and the hikers have arrived.

Hikers on the Caoling Historic Trail, Taiwan
Photo: Chuanhsien Lin

In Taiwan, fall has its glory—a counterpart to cherry blossom time. This month is awn flower season, when the Miscanthus erupts into soft sparklers of bloom. The combination of natural wonder and promotional inventiveness has enticed residents of this hike-happy island to the Caoling Historic Trail. A path built of local sandstone, it winds through the mountain valleys of northeastern Taiwan.

“Until the early 20th century, the Tsaoling trail was the only passage from Taipei City to the northeastern county of Yilan, with bandits often appearing along the trek to attack travelers.” Today, the government office that oversees the region has arranged for docent “bandits” to surprise hikers with quiz questions (we kid you not) en route.

In the interest of boosting tourism and jollity, Taiwan like other nations appears to have gone festival mad, with localities making public parties out of cormorants, bluefish tuna, skydiving, and “even salt.” (We would be delighted, by the way, to attend a Salt celebration anywhere in the world.)  There are a few competing awn flower spots, too.

Miscanthus
Autumn Awn (Chio Mang)
Photo: Mesh Wu

Our new friend, photographer Mesh Wu has sent along these recent photos of grass blooming in Yangmingshan National Park. Mesh writes, “In Taiwan, we have a term ‘autumn awn,’ because many mountains are always full of these plants every autumn. If you are interested, the first character is autumn (read as chio) and the second one is awn (read as mang) in Chinese.”
 
Thank you, Mesh!

It appears that the Caoling grass is Miscanthus sinensis, though we’re not positive. Here are some miscanthus identification tools for all you sticklers. We welcome confirmation or correction.

And here are loads more photos of the Caoling Trail taken by Chuanhsien Lin. It looks as if the hike takes 3-4 hours, just about right for us piker-hikers. Along the way there are some lovely stone carvings dating from the Qing Dynasty. 

Note (11/20): Chuanhsien Lin kindly sent along a link to photos of this year’s Caoling trail. Chuanhsien writes, “It was also crowded with many hikers there. But it’s a little pity that the weather was not so good, and we had light rain several times.” Looks fair and lovely from here.

It seems to us that only in East Asia would it be possible to suggest flowering grass as a sightseeing destination. To those who can’t make it to Taiwan for awn blossom time but share this refined sensibility, may we recommend the films of Terrence Malick, the most grass-enchanted of directors.