Making Tracks-- Taiwanese Explorers Go Global

After the discovery of fire, the wilds became the realm of man.

When bonfires were lit in the fog-clad mountains their light brought people together, and even the difficulties of crossing the mountains became easier, giving people greater peace of mind.

Fire became a symbol of conquest. Once fire was brought into the wilderness, the unknown world became familiar, and in the light of fire, civilization moved forward. Mankind used fire to light up the wilderness. From China's Zhang Qian, Faxian, Genghis Khan, Xuanzang, and Zheng He, and the West's Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Sven Hedin all the way to Neil Armstrong, the steps of countless explorers have expanded the realm of man and filled the stores of learning, giving us tales of excitement, romance, bravery, and fortitude.

Fire illuminated the West and illuminated the East, shone on the ancients and shone on the moderns. In 2000, the expedition "Trekking Without Genghis Khan" organized entirely by Taiwanese, retraced on foot the historic route of Mongol ruler Genghis Khan's western conquest 800 years ago. The expedition became the most celebrated of all exploration activities by Taiwanese in recent years.

In Taiwan, with its many precipitous peaks and the diverse ancestry of its people, the step of the explorer has in fact never been stayed. Following the publication of numerous books on exploration, whether by the many foreign explorers who have come to Taiwan in recent years or the exploits of Taiwanese explorers around the globe, stories of exploration are becoming more widely known.

Since restrictions on entering the mountains were lifted in 1980, the diverse mountainscapes of Taiwan have attracted countless climbers. "While the legal restrictions were in effect, the only people who conquered the many obstacles to getting up the mountains were a few crazy fools," recalls 77-year-old seasoned mountaineer Lin Shan-ku. "Only later, when the restrictions were lifted, did the situation change." The arrival of mountain climbers initiated a wave of recreational climbing, and the difficulty of many of Taiwan's mountains created a reservoir of experience and raised a new generation of explorers. These explorers followed in the footsteps of those who had gone before them, whether it was the conquests of Genghis Khan or many journeys along Taiwan's ancient trails. They looked beyond the many mountains of Taiwan and challenged the boundaries of the world. From the Himalayas straddling across the Chinese-Indian border, to Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro, one can find the tracks of Taiwanese mountaineers. National Chung Cheng University graduate student Lin Yi-chieh, a repeated survivor of the "Death Marathon," after his impressive feats of crossing the Sahara and Gobi deserts, is preparing this year to head to the Amazon Basin and the South Pole-and to challenge the limits of human endurance and willpower.

In order to explore the Kuanmen Old Trail, which was a busy route for a brief period in Taiwan's history, Cheng An-hsi, a PhD candidate in ethnology at National Chengchi University, attempted to breach the area between Rainbow Lake and the eastern peak of Mt. Malichianan on the border of Nantou and Hualien Counties-a landscape so rugged that it resembles a natural fortress. He followed commercial roads to foresters' roads to narrow paths used by hunters to trails trampled down over time by large animals. Finally, Cheng and his companions spent an entire day soaked with perspiration cutting a path through the thick undergrowth using machetes.

"Sometimes I felt like a mountain goat," Cheng recalls, "leaping across chasms in a way that ordinarily even I would find unbelievable." From city lanes to the highest parts of the wilds, he time and time again forayed into the blank regions of the map.

The Kuanmen Old Trail, constructed around 1886, was the last of the Qing-era east-west roads that were cut across the Central Mountain Range to subjugate the Aboriginals. As with other roads built during the Qing Dynasty, soldiers were dispatched to watch over construction, but once the road was completed, tribesmen harassed those who ventured onto it, while natural disasters slowly took a toll as well. In the end, the road was abandoned.

After the Japanese occupied Taiwan, Yoshitora Nagano, Yasushi Noro, Ushinosuke Mori and other Japanese explorers surveyed this road, which begins in Chichi Township in Nantou County and passes eastward over Mt. Kuanmen to Juisui Rural Township in Hualien County, stretching a total length of 104 kilometers. The Japanese administration even considered restoring the route. In the end, however, the plan came to nothing. The trail, also called the Patsu Cross-Island Trail, was left to fall into ruin and the undergrowth once more conquered the path. Only short stretches of the trail remained intact, and these were used as a route between tribal villages by the Bunun Aboriginals of the Tanta area.

After visiting the old trail more than 20 times, Cheng in 1999 finished mapping its entire route. For this achievement, old trails expert Nelson Yang called him "the most promising young scholar of exploration."

Perhaps because of the many dangers he has faced while exploring, Cheng to this day does not encourage other people to go exploring in the mountains. "The first time I led a group out," he recalls, "we tried to go straight up Mt. Patsu, in the extremely rugged eastern part of the Central Mountain Range. In the end, we nearly had to give up. I almost got the whole group into a real jam."

While investigating the old trail, Cheng slid into gorges many times and even came face to face with the deadly cobra. "As for losing the road and getting stranded in the underbrush," he says, "these things became everyday fare."

"Aside from the unexpected things we usually refer to as the 'dangers,' of exploring, even mosquitoes can cause so much pain that you start to wish you were dead," Cheng says. An expedition he was leading once ran into a swarm of mosquitoes on Mt. Patsu that launched a surprise attack as if out of a nightmare. "It was as if you could close your eyes and grab the air with your hand, and you would have a fistful of dead mosquitoes."

After entering his doctoral program, Cheng decided that the focus of his research would be the Tanta community of the Bunun people. Because of the rigors of fieldwork, days in which meals were cooked over an open fire in the mountains became the norm. "Finding a path in the mountains usually requires one person to stay put while three others reconnoiter, to the left, the right, and ahead," Chen says. "At a fixed time, everyone regroups and then decides which way to go. Yet, as your experience of exploring grows, it seems that a natural instinct is awakened. Later, when looking for a path, you rely on something akin to instinct or intuition, which turns out to be remarkably accurate," Cheng adds with a smile.

The historian Eric Hobsbawm points out that by the 1880s the world was already worthy of the name global village. Nearly every corner of the globe had been discovered and colored in on the map. He feels that from that time on exploration was no longer the discovery of the unknown, but resembled rather a challenge with attendant aspects of fierce individualism and national competition.

In this competitive environment, the survival instinct is aroused. The human appetite for the search calls forth perseverance and stamina and becomes a harsh test of resolve and courage.

"You walk until both your legs go numb, your eyes cloud over, and your entire body loses feeling, and you can't even think," recalls Wang Kuang-yu, one of the two women who participated in the "Trekking Without Genghis Khan" expedition.

In 1999, shortly before the Genghis Khan expedition was due to set off, Wang, who had had a great deal of experience with the outdoors and was passionate about mountaineering, excitedly sent in her resume for consideration. After being selected for the team, she underwent weeks of training, and then the four-man, two-woman team set out from the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar under the glare of intense media coverage, and began their journey of 17,000 kilometers. They followed the famous Tian Shan mountain range, crossed the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush, then reached the Caspian Sea by way of the Caucasus. Within the allotted year and a half, the expedition planned to pass through 15 countries.

Flying the flag for Taiwan's courage and spirit of adventure, the expedition bravely marched onward on rainy and sunny days alike, covering at least 30 kilometers a day.

The rapid pace of the march, however, left the expedition members precious little time to survey their surroundings and understand local cultures. Because she proceeded at a slower pace, Wang often couldn't keep up, and in the godforsaken deserts and plateaus, she felt despondent. Her romantic ideas of exploration evaporated little by little.

After nearly a year, Wang and fellow team member Chen Kuo-han decided to leave the expedition, releasing themselves from the torturous methods of the long trek. A few months later, after the expedition had been completed and the team was celebrating in Moscow, Wang and Chen once again raised money to return to Central Asia. This time there was no media coverage and no great burdens weighing on them. In Uzbekistan, they chose another method of understanding Genghis Khan.

"At that time, we read many biographies of Genghis Khan to really get a feel for him," Wang says. "We tried to understand the nomadic traditions of the area. Even though Uzbeks were slaughtered at the hands of the Mongols, they still said that Genghis Khan was a great hero, even as they stood before a mosque damaged during that period."

"This land so rich in beauty has made countless heroes bow in homage," Mao Zedong once exclaimed. The Eurasian empire that Genghis Khan founded was mostly an arid region, with the exception of the Caspian Sea area. Average annual rainfall was less than 300 millimeters. Because tales of Genghis Khan's exploits are still retold today, people still go into desert exploring.

Some people pursue a kingdom, some pursue marvels and wonders. Some travel to expanses of sand, and some to the depths of the rainforest. In the 1970s, at a time when the Taiwanese still seldom traveled abroad, the writer San Mao became a best-selling author by producing a series of prose works with the flavor of foreign places. She used writing to take readers to far-flung locales that they would have no other opportunity to visit. While working at the Taiwan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Hsu Jen-hsiu, who has also published many bestsellers on exploration, seized a rare job opportunity and boldly went off to the Central American nation of Nicaragua.

During his three-year stay in Nicaragua, Hsu ventured into the rainforest under the guidance of the locals whenever he had time, which stirred in him a lifelong passion for the rainforest. Rainforests, which cover only 5% of the earth's surface, provide a habitat for more than 60% of our planet's species. The great variety of life is a source of joy, but is also indicative of the danger. "In the Amazon Basin, for example, various types of poisonous snake, mushrooms and fungi, as well as plants, birds, reptiles, and insects, whether in the water or on land, are all under great threat," Hsu says.

Not long after returning from Central America, Hsu traveled to the Philippines and visited various rainforests in Southeast Asia. His itinerary took him to the Indonesian part of Borneo, the island of Java, and other parts of Southeast Asia. From his experiences in the rainforest, he wrote in a simple and honest style a prose account of his journey, which lies somewhere between exploration and travel. The work inspired many readers to open their imaginations on the subject of exploration.

Chen, whose life's path has taken him from his native Hakka village in Hsinchu to the world's rainforests, recalls that when he was 20 years old, his father told him, "Many people in their entire lives never have the chance to visit such far-off countries." His father's words banished all hesitation.

"Who says the Chinese lack the spirit of exploration?" Hsu asks. For example, the Kayan people of Borneo, who live along the Rajang and Baram rivers, today have more or less preserved the nomadic lifestyle of the hunter. In the past, they also practiced the custom of headhunting. A local chieftain told Hsu that at that time the only people who dared enter Kayan territory were the Chinese, who traded matches, salt, sugar, and other articles with the Penan. "It's the same in Central and South America," he chuckles. "A wave of Hakka people flooded into the Amazon Basin to make a quick buck. Even the guns of the drug lords couldn't drive them out. In the end, it was only because of the ravages of malaria that they slowly began to withdraw."

"If the Chinese have no spirit of exploration, how is it that there are Chinese people in every part of the globe?" Hsu asks. "It's just that their expeditions are accompanied by a thirst for profit and practical objectives. In this dog-eat-dog world, it's to be expected."

Perhaps it is because he has heard too many stories of human nature changing in the struggle for survival-stories of man's pillaging and avarice leading to the destruction of the environment and the vanishing of the rainforests, and stories of Aboriginal territories being encroached upon by stronger peoples-that while Hsu encourages young people to go exploring, he emphasizes that exploration is intended purely to round out their experience.

Perhaps as a result of this view, when Hsu discusses his exploration hero, veteran artist Max Liu, he holds nothing back in the way of praise. "Liu the explorer, whether following his interests, engaging in anthropological investigations, or recording the marvels he discovered, had only the goal of making himself happy fulfilling his own life and happily sharing it with others," says Hsu. "This is how all real exploration should be."

Whether it's to discover new texts, different customs, mineral deposits, or to write books, seek grand vistas, establish colonies, or open markets, people have continuously searched for new lands with varying motives over the past thousands of years. The successful explorers have entered the history books, but there are also many failed explorers who found only graves in the wilderness.

In the Hollywood adventure movie series featuring Indiana Jones, the white hero continuously trespasses on the sacred lands of primitive peoples. He plunders their precious objects, even as he plays the role of their savior. This sort of plot leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of Lin A-min, a Taiwanese Puyuma Aboriginal.

Hurrying back to Taipei after spending a holiday in the mountains of Taitung hunting, Lin cracks a joke. "From the real jungle," he says, "I return to the urban jungle." Lin says that many Chinese go exploring in the Aboriginal hunting grounds, but that as far as he is concerned, the hunting grounds are for hunting. "Sometimes, after a few weeks in the mountains, the game animals on the hunting grounds start to vanish. Then we must go further into the mountains to find a new hunting ground."

"This kind of activity itself seems like exploring, but in fact it's only survival," he says. Agricultural societies expand their farmland; hunting societies seek out hunting grounds. Exploration is a product of the need to survive.

As human exploration marches on, people also continually reexamine the significance of exploration activities. The reassessment of Columbus's historical standing is a case in point. By command the Spanish monarch, Columbus set out in search of fabled Cathay. His accidental "discovery" of America, in fact already populated by Amerindians, changed the history of man and therefore won him a reputation as a great explorer.

Nevertheless, even the "great" Columbus could not avoid the verdicts of the differing voices of today. Some treatises hold that Columbus's "discovery" led to colonization by the various powers of Europe and set off endless pillaging and slaughter. By challenging the unknown, exploration forges the will of man, but it deteriorated into a form of exploitation. This perhaps was not Columbus's intention, but it is enough to prompt explorers today to take his example as a warning.

In Taiwan, one could say that the first flowering of exploration activities was an extension of the popularity of travel and the interest in seeking out exotic places. At the beginning of the 1990s, following the rise in popularity of travel in Taiwan a great number of exploration travelogues started to come onto the market. At first, the contents gave but a taste of various destinations, but slowly the works began to take on the flavor of exploration literature or even more serious treatises.

In Chinese history, exploration expeditions generally returned with both knowledge and culture, resulting in a change of the "self," wrote Jan Hung-tze-praised by Taiwan's explorers for having read more works on exploration than anyone else in Taiwan-in an essay. Modern Western exploration, however, resulted in colonization and the building of empire, and that which was changed was always the "other." Alan Hsu, the head of the Society of Extreme Exploration, Taiwan, echoing Jan's opinion, believes that the traditional Chinese moral idea of kingship lies at the heart of this fundamental difference.

By understanding Western exploration history, according to Jan Hung-tze, one can better understand the thirst for conquest and other aspects of Western culture. One can also understand through the dramatic historical process of exploration the many variations of human nature-whether following the high road or the low.

Recent publications on exploration, however, from the travel and leisure craze to cultural critiques, although following the fashions of the times, carry within them even greater significance.

Cheng An-hsi, who surveyed the Kuanmen Old Trail, used modern techniques to ensure that the entire road reemerged on the map. While he was surveying the route, Cheng collected all the maps he could find from the Qing, Japanese, and Republic of China eras in Taiwan's history. But the maps' lack of clarity left Cheng pulling out his hair in frustration. "Some maps show only natural resources," he says. "Some have only contour lines."

Nevertheless, aside from Cheng, well-known expert on the old trails Nelson Yang and environmentalist writer Liu Ko-hsiang have translated and written many volumes of earlier explorers' and their own exploration works on Taiwan, expanding the view of local people toward the island and resulting in new interpretations for the Qing and Japanese periods.

With a new map and with history written by ourselves, says Wu Mi-cha, vice chairman of the Council for Cultural Affairs and a history professor at National Taiwan University, the Taiwanese can reassess and reinterpret the historical development of this patch of land. Only then can we, after being colonized by various countries, see ourselves through our own eyes and leave behind the post-colonial curse. This seems to be the driving force behind the popularity of exploring Taiwan's own territory.

Having already reached the North Pole, in 2003 Ken Chen, then 43, successfully completed an expedition to the South Pole, becoming one of the rare explorers in Taiwan who have made it to both poles. Although intentionally low-key, this instructor of "Wood Badge" scouts received a flood of telephone interviews after returning to Taiwan. "Lots of people are interested in polar expeditions," he says. "In no time there'll be even more people setting out."

Whether it's the polar regions or the newest exploration paradise-deep space or the bottom of the sea-taking the primitive and the unknown and changing them into part of our civilization is a permanent part of human behavior. Looking closely at exploration history, we find that as science progresses endlessly, our means of penetrating previously closed off territory expands to the point that these areas become prime travel destinations. "But everything changes," says Alan Hsu laughing. "The human heart above all should change."

Explorers in the "age of discovery" helped unleash subsequent waves of migration. The exploitation of land and resources has reached unprecedented levels of intensity. The robbing of the weak by the strong is also reaching new peaks. After a century, civilization has brought the world's resources before the eyes of humanity. Contemporary explorers, aside from writing their own stories, are highly conscious of the environment and related questions. Adopting a skeptical view, they are willing to ask themselves whether the use of resources is warranted.

"Today's explorers also need to be conservationists," says John M. Fahey Jr., president of National Geographic. British conservationist Jane Goodall, who has been to Taiwan several times, points out that if human wastefulness is not rectified and species are wiped out, there will be nothing new on earth to be investigated.

At the same time, exploration of the rainforests in the past decades has alarmed Hsu Jen-hsiu because of the pace of their destruction. "Can't we change the manner that we live our lives to avoid the rapid loss of natural resources?" he asks.

Moreover, aside from the relationship between man and nature, exploration in this new age should be undertaken cooperatively, Father Benoit Vermander of the Taipei Ricci Institute believes. "The significance of exploration lies in breaking down barriers, in conquering obstacles," he says. "Past explorers and the peoples they encountered were at odds. Powerful peoples intruded on others to explore. Aboriginal areas, for example, were surveyed and stripped bare. Today's explorers, however, need to open their own minds, and let others come and explore their own cultures as well."

Whether it's discovering or being discovered, the limits of investigation are erased, allowing the impossible to become the possible. And as the steps of explorers press on, paths between people open up.

After completing his investigation of the Kuanmen Old Trail, Cheng An-hsi poured his experiences into a book. Just what did he learn? Cheng says he learned to view the mountains from a different perspective. "To the Aborigines, the mountains are alive and possess the ability to speak," says Cheng. "But the Han Chinese view, it seems, is still stuck on the notion that mountains are natural barriers to be conquered."

Thinking of the string of obstacles he faced in starting on a new academic path following his transfer from the Arabic studies department to the history department, and then to a doctoral program in ethnology, and the mountain climbing that ignited his passion for the Kuanmen Old Trail, Cheng shakes his head and lets loose a smile that betrays his thoughts: "I don't get it either."

After Wang Kuang-yu left the "Trekking Without Genghis Khan" expedition, the media stopped buzzing around. After Wang decided to make her journeys in easier stages, she and fellow expedition mate Chen Kuo-han, who also abandoned the trek, became close partners, and together explored Central Asia and Mongolia. Last year, the couple married, becoming expedition mates for life and together setting off on an even longer adventure. "While retracing Genghis Khan's steps, I often slowed the expedition down because I couldn't keep up," says Wang. "Kuo-han's encouragement made it seem as if the heavens had sent one of my own family members to watch over me." That unfinished expedition brought the fruits of an entirely different harvest to Wang.

Over a decade ago, Hsu Jen-hsiu founded an environmentalist group and funneled his passion for exploration into disseminating environmental concepts. Lin A-min said farewell to the mountains in order to work. He says that life in Taipei seems even more like an exploration, packed with all kinds of curious spectacles and personalities. And last year Max Liu, whom nearly all of Taiwan's explorers hold in the highest regard, departed this life and continued his exploration of the unknown in the mysterious world beyond. The fires continue to flicker; the world continues to evolve; and explorers continue to explore, walking endlessly into the vast unknown and shedding light on the mysterious corners of human nature, like a light searching out the real self.

Countless stirring stories have been handed down. Over warm cups of tea or spirits, people still passionately retell the tales with listeners hanging on every word.

The most inspirational stories, however, are still to be written. They require each of us to enter the vast unknown and rely on our courage to find words of our own.

Offered an opportunity by fate, Hsu Jen-hsiu stepped into the world of exploration. Through the creativity of his pen, the inscrutable ecology of the rainforest becomes the subject of bestsellers, allowing Hsu to spread his passion for wilderness preservation through the written word. (photos courtesy of Hsu Jen-hsiu)