Journey 03 · Taiwan
The Slow Side of Taiwan
Hualien to Taitung, mostly by train
Published 29 May 2026 · Travelled 18–28 Apr 2026
- 9 moments
- 11 days
- 201 km
- Spring
- Taiwan
- 38mm · f/8 · 1/500
- 24.0281° N, 121.6244° E
- Roll one, frame 04 — Portra 400
- Qixingtan beach, Hualien
- 06:40
- 23°C, clear, humid
First morning in Hualien, and the beach turned out to be a bank of grey pebbles that shifts under you and rattles when the water goes back out. The mountains start immediately behind the town, so you get the whole thing at once — pebbles, then surf, then a wall of green, and no room in between for anything else.
- 38mm · f/5.6 · 1/125
- 24.1736° N, 121.5583° E
- Roll two, frame 13
- Swallow Grotto, Taroko Gorge
- 09:30
- 21°C, sun into the gorge
Taroko is a marble gorge and the old road runs through it in tunnels with windows knocked out of the rock, so you walk in the dark and then there is a rectangle of light and a river four hundred metres below. Helmets are compulsory because of rockfall, which they mention very calmly. It is loud in there in a way photographs cannot carry.
- 38mm · f/4 · 1/250
- 24.1583° N, 121.6153° E
- Roll two, frames 26 and 31
- 38mm · f/4 · 1/250
- 24.1583° N, 121.6153° E
- Roll two, frames 26 and 31
- Shakadang trail, Taroko
- 11:10
- 26°C, hot, still
Shakadang is an hour along a ledge cut just above the river, and the water underneath is a blue-green that comes from the marble dust in it. I did not believe it either. The first frame is from the trail, the second from a boulder I should probably not have climbed onto, about forty minutes further in where the ferns start coming over the edge.
- 38mm · f/2.8 · 1/60
- 23.9769° N, 121.6044° E
- Roll three, frame 09
- Near Hualien station
- 07:15
Near Hualien station there is a shop with a steel counter, four stools and a pot that has clearly not been emptied since the shop opened. You point at the pot. It arrives in about ninety seconds with too much coriander on it, which is correct. I went back three mornings running and by the third the woman had stopped asking.
- 38mm · f/11 · 1/500
- 24.2039° N, 121.6853° E
- Roll four, frame 17
- Qingshui Cliff, Chongde
- 15:20
- 25°C, clear, hazy horizon
North of Hualien the range meets the Pacific with almost no shore at all — a thousand metres of green going into deep blue, and the highway is bolted onto the middle of it. The pull-off at Chongde is a strip of gravel and a fence. I stood there for an hour and used four frames, which for me is a lot of standing per frame.
- 38mm · f/2.8 · 1/30
- 23.9800° N, 121.6220° E
- Roll five, frame 20 — HP5 pushed
- Dongdamen night market, Hualien
- 21:40
- 24°C, warm, drizzle earlier
Dongdamen market after nine, and this stall had a fluorescent tube doing all the work and a red scooter left in front of it at what I can only describe as a professional angle. This is the frame where I found out what the T2's flash actually does to a wet road, which is: too much. I turned it off and shot at a thirtieth, leaning on a bollard.
Overheard · Near Ruisui, East Rift Valley · 13:50
"Where are you going?" — "Chishang." — "There is nothing at Chishang." — "I know." He thought about this for a while and then said, "Yes. That is why people go." Then he gave me half a bag of dried mango and went back to his phone.
- 38mm · f/8 · 1/250
- 23.1233° N, 121.2153° E
- Roll seven, frame 12
- Chishang, Taitung
- 16:30
- 27°C, cloud building over the range
Between the coastal range and the central range there is a strip of rice about ten kilometres wide, and in late April it is at the stage where it is bright and thin and the irrigation channels still show through it. You can rent a bicycle at Chishang station for the price of a coffee. Nobody hurries. The whole valley smells of wet field.
- Mr Brown Avenue, Chishang
- 17:35
- 24°C, overcast, flat
- Last frame
There is a straight road through the paddies at Chishang with one tree beside it, and it is famous here because of an advertisement, and there were nine people photographing it when I arrived. I waited until half past five when they had all gone and the light had gone with them, and shot it flat and grey on the last frames of the HP5, which is how it actually looked.
- 38mm · f/5.6 · 1/125
- 23.1189° N, 121.2214° E
- Roll nine, frame 36 — the last one
The route
9 stops
Journey completed
Eleven days, nine stories
- Distance walked
- 62 km
- Frames exposed
- 324
- Rolls shot
- 9
- Train legs
- 7
- Bowls of noodles before ten in the morning
- 6
- Favourite moment
- The road through the rice at Chishang with no cars on it and the mountains going in and out of cloud
- Best food
- A bowl of noodles in a shop with four stools near Hualien station, ordered by pointing, eaten in nine minutes
