As in years past, today's visitors to Moon World follow a beaten trail. In Tainan people used to speak of the Central, South, and North Roads, which split off eastward from Hsinhua, Kuanmiao and Tsochen villages, linking the former Taiwan Prefecture (now Tainan) with the Liukuei region.

The North Road is my favorite. Setting out along the gravel lane outside the gate of the Kanglin Presbyterian Church, my car sways its way into a landscape of bare hills. Then I slowly begin to take in the bleak beauty of this vast, barren environment. Finally, I bump along Highland Region 308 to Mucha hamlet in Neimen county.

Nowadays, the area traversed by North Road is generally known as Tsaoshan Moon World. The road, which passes through Tsaoshan and Erliao villages, offers awe-inspiring views of this natural scene of utter desolation. Many photographers like to come to this spot to watch its myriad changes over the four seasons. The mist and clouds at dawn and dusk are a sight to behold. With its bamboo groves, bare crags, and mountain breezes, this meandering road offers up a majestic panorama.

But I love this old road not just for its beautiful scenery. Even more important is a man-made reason: it is haunted by history! Truly, few places in Taiwan's modern history are at the same time as remote and perplexing.

In the past, this place also attracted many Western travelers. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, explorer W.A. Pickering, photographer John Thomson, Presbyterian ministers Dr. James Laidlaw Maxwell and William Campbell, and naturalists J.D.D. La Touche and P.A. Holst trekked over hills and dales to come here, and left a precious record of writings and photographs. Whoever underwent this baptism by fire could not but learn from the experience.

Along this road there are also many settlements of Aborigines (forced up here by Chinese immigrants) and Hakkas. Liukuei was a border area where the Rukai, Bunun, Tsou and other Aboriginal tribes came into contact with the Han Chinese. The Han frequently came east bringing clothes and fabrics, firearms, salt, and other artifacts to barter for animal hides, medicinal herbs, cinnamon, and other products. Traveling merchants often needed a week to make the trip. Western travelers wanted different things and had different likes and dislikes; for the most part they did not like to visit the Badlands. What they wanted to see was what lay beyond the Badlands, Formosa's forests:

"These mountains and hills are largely covered in sand, clay, and limestone, lacking vegetation. Unlike forested mountains, this type of environment is best suited to making dust." John Thomson (1873)

"The mountains hereabouts are mostly barren and treeless; the bare ground is covered by nothing more than short grass and weeds. This scenery makes me despondent and disinterested in pressing ahead with my explorations." La Touche (1893)

Traveling along this road today, I come across a former Pingpu Aboriginal shrine, a hundred-year-old church, old dwellings, and old trees. The geographical features described by travelers in the past remain distinct. What's ironic is that because this terrain is dreary and underdeveloped, the local minority peoples have been able to preserve their communities much as they looked a hundred years ago. Standing on Highland Region 308 and marveling with other travelers, I cannot help but feel a deep regret, not unlike that expressed by the Tang poet Liu Shang in a verse about the Silk Road: "No bird flies into the dark shadows cast over ten thousand miles; there are no directions in the boundless frozen sands." This could have been written about Moon World.

Lastly, I go to the Mucha Presbyterian Church, where I stand silently in its exhibition room and savor Pingpu tribal relics and photographs by John Thomson. Every time I cross Moon World, I make a point of stopping here to converse with old Taiwan.

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Going through the groves of Hsinhua and Kuanmiao, where mangos (left) are grown, the Badlands (opposite page) stretches across a landscape of bluish-green limestone on the border of Tainan and Kaohsiung counties.

(graphic: Liu Ko-hsiang)

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When the first Western explorers traversed Moon World, their ultimate goal was the green forests that lay beyond it. They were nonetheless moved by these "Badlands" and left a valuable historical record of what they saw.

When the first Western explorers traversed Moon World, their ultimate goal was the green forests that lay beyond it. They were nonetheless moved by these "Badlands" and left a valuable historical record of what they saw.

Going through the groves of Hsinhua and Kuanmiao, where mangos are grown, the Badlands stretches across a landscape of bluish-green limestone on the border of Tainan and Kaohsiung counties.