Rediscovering Taipingshan

At Jhongjian Service Station in the Taipingshan National Forest Recreation Area in northeastern Taiwan’s Yilan County, a new permanent exhibition brings the forest indoors. Drawing on natural historian Wu Yung-Hwa’s book A Dream in Pink: A Century of Discovering Nature in Taipingshan and designed by Ama Hsueh of the Xingzhijian creative studio, the exhibition Unexpected Encounters with Nature at Jhongjian uses reproductions of historical records, natural history specimens, collecting tools, displays of images and text, sound, and the setting itself to turn stories from the text into a forest experience visitors can see, hear, touch, and imagine.

In the logging era, Jhongjian was a transfer point between mountain railways and aerial cableways, midway between Jioujhihze below and the Old Taipingshan and New Taipingshan forestry industry zones above. Its position gave it its name. Jhongjian means “in the middle.”

Stop at Jhongjian for the forest’s story

Ringed by mountains, Jhongjian Service Station commands a wide view of one green ridge after another. Its name means “in the middle,” a reference to its location between the terminus of the old cableway at Jioujhihze and logging areas farther uphill. The name also tells us where Jhongjian fits in Taipingshan’s history.

Logging in this area first occurred in the “Old Taipingshan” (aka Lantai) forestry industry zone, but this was exhausted by the mid-1930s. Development of the New Taipingshan zone began in 1937. Over decades of logging, timber was brought down from the mountains in stages, passing between rail lines and aerial cableways. Jhongjian became an important transfer point, with tracks, cableways, log-skidding equipment, and other forestry facilities nearby.

Butterfly-inspired designs decorate the windows of the Unexpected Encounters with Nature at Jhongjian exhibition hall, while large images outside show wildlife found in Taipingshan.

Timber production ended in 1982, and Taipingshan became a national forest recreation area the following year. Jhongjian Service Station—now also known as the Taipingshan Visitor Center—gradually became a place for visitor services and exhibitions. Through the shift from logging to forest recreation, Jhongjian has remained a place to pause before continuing up or down the mountain.

The new permanent exhibition, Unexpected Encounters with Nature at Jhongjian, moves beyond the earlier text-heavy displays. As visitors approach the venue, butterfly silhouettes on the floor-to-ceiling windows are the first thing to greet them. Outside, large photographs show animals found in Taipingshan, including Moltrecht’s tree frogs, Mandarin ducks, Formosan macaques, plumbeous redstarts, and Swinhoe’s pheasants. The photographs were collected for the exhibition from nature photographers on the Yilan Branch staff and from amphibian researcher Li Cheng-en. Every pair of eyes seems to greet travelers as they arrive.

Inside, the gallery offers open sightlines which enable one to see the play of light casting the shapes of swaying trees across the ceiling and walls. As the light shifts, layers of shadow make it feel as though you’re walking step by step into the stillness of the deep forest.

Light and shadow evoke swaying trees in the gallery with its open sightlines, giving visitors the sense of walking into a quiet forest.

Further in, you suddenly hear Moltrecht’s tree frogs calling, interspersed with the quick “hoo, hoo, hoo” of a Himalayan owl. It turns out that infrared sensors hidden in the gallery walls trigger the sounds of Taipingshan’s forest animals as visitors draw near.

A little farther on, a wide-eyed mountain scops-owl meets your gaze. Then, out of the corner of your eye, you catch what seems like a flash of movement. It’s actually a yellow-throated marten in a display case, eyeing passersby with apparent curiosity. The marten was killed by a vehicle on a road in Taipingshan. The Yilan Branch had it prepared as a specimen in the hope that, after its life was cut short, it could still have conservation and educational value.

This yellow-throated marten was killed by a vehicle on Taipingshan. Preserved as a specimen, it took on a new purpose after death. Previously displayed at the Yuanshan Ecocenter, the marten has returned to Taipingshan for this exhibition, giving the display special meaning.

How generations have encountered nature

Each specimen not only is proof that a species exists, it also holds traces of what its discoverer saw, where they went, and the era in which they lived.

Many of the animal specimens on display come from collections the Yilan Branch has built up over the years. The branch commissioned professional taxidermists to prepare and restore them for the exhibition. It also borrowed specimens of “true owls” (as the taxonomic family is known) from other institutions to round out the display.

Staff from the Yilan Branch of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency collected and prepared these specimens of Lepidoptera, the taxonomic order that includes butterflies and moths.

The same approach extends to the insect specimens. The branch enlisted professional insect collectors to help prepare them, and its own staff took part in collecting, sorting, and preparing some of the specimens. In identifying, observing, and preparing specimens, people find a way to reconnect with nature.

Elsewhere in the exhibition are reproductions of historical documents and the collecting gear used by early naturalists. They echo the journeys recounted in A Dream in Pink, which tells the stories of generations of researchers who came to Taipingshan to explore its natural world. Among the artifacts and specimens, visitors can picture researchers a century ago, packs on their backs, heading into the forest.

From a single leaf and a specimen to a book, from the collecting records left by researchers a century ago to the ecological surveys and species recovery work that continue today, Unexpected Encounters with Nature at Jhongjian traces what people have found in Taipingshan. These discoveries are part of a larger story about how people and nature have met here time and again, across eras.

The next time you head up Taipingshan, pause at Jhongjian Service Station along the way and see what wonders of the forest you come across.

The ecological education classroom at Jhongjian Service Station was designed as a comfortable, convenient space for ecological survey teams working in the area.

The new permanent exhibition Unexpected Encounters with Nature at Jhongjian has opened in Taipingshan. Pause here on your journey for your own encounter with nature.