The KMT government arrived in Taiwan in August 1949, and President Chiang Kai-shek made his first inspection trip up Mt. Ali-Alishan-that November. He visited again two years later with Madame Chiang, this time rechristening Kodama Station, located on the Forest Rail's Dongpu Line and originally named in honor of the Japanese Governor-General Gentaro Kodama, Zizhong Station to memorialize General Zhang Zizhong, a hero of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Sixty years later, the great ones have passed away, the giant trees have fallen, and we still haven't retaken the mainland. Instead, bevies of mainland tourists have been making a beeline for Alishan, reinvigorating tourism on the long-quiescent mountain.

Alishan may well be the most scenic spot in Taiwan. But 100 years of non-stop exploitation and development by the lumber, agriculture, and tourism industries, coupled with the transportation infrastructure that serves them, have left it looking a little frazzled. As the saying goes, it's far too easy to take for granted those who are closest to you. If we don't start taking better care the mountain, this new wave of interest will soon wane.

This month's Taiwan Panorama includes a piece on a secret hideaway in eastern Taipei-the old Songshan Tobacco Factory. It too was once important to the Japanese colonial government, and retained its prominence in the early years of KMT rule in Taiwan, but gradually faded into a kind of obscurity. Now attracting attention after years of neglect, it, like Alishan, has become the subject of heated disagreements-in the former factory's case, over the BOT project intended to develop the site.

Despite its location in the midst of busy Taipei, the factory remained shrouded in mystery for years. That veil began to lift about a decade ago. In this month's issue, senior writer Chen Hsin-yi takes a fascinating look at the public's varied hopes for this large public works project and others like it.

The development of Alishan at the turn of the 20th century raised similar issues. The Alishan railroad project was proposed in 1903, but then rejected by the Japanese Diet when the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War led to a funding crunch. The project languished for two years before being picked up by private firms. When these firms ran out of money and halted construction two years later after completing the difficult corkscrew ascent around Dulishan, the Japanese government decided to take the project back into the public sector and fund further construction of the rail line.

Alpine rail lines are difficult to build and harder still to maintain. The government discussed privatizing the line in 1996, and went so far as to have the head of the Forestry Bureau bring a group of business leaders that included Formosa Plastics' Wang Yung-ching, the Tuntex Group's Chen You-hao, and the Nice Group's Chen Jer-fang to the mountain to elicit their opinions on privatization (or possibly persuade them to take over the line). Wang demonstrated his renowned business acumen by electing to pass.

The questions of whether to develop state land, and, if so, how to go about it, are eternal. These days, it's hard to get a room on Alishan. Do we want it to remain that crowded? Should we control the number of visitors with higher prices? Should we undertake major construction projects to "service" tourists? What about Kaohsiung's World Games Stadium? While Taiwanese are justly proud of this stadium, most view Taipei's equally capacious "Big Egg" as a useless extravagance. Such issues highlight the need for people to be more involved in the process and to study proposals in greater depth.

This issue also follows up on last month's cover story with new pieces on the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA). Taiwan needs external links, and East Asia needs Taiwan. But what does the government need to do to ensure that the ECFA is both stable and lasting? This too is something we need to think about together.