Day 16 - SanSianTai & BaSianDong

Today’s Programme
Morning	East Rift Valley National Scenic Area
Afternoon
Evening	Hualian Night Market
Hotel	KKS Hotel, Hua Lien

I woke up 10 minutes before we got the morning call because of the earthquake. I was still sleeping, the bed was suddenly shaking. I thought it was the ghost as we stayed at the scary hotel. I realized later that it was measured to have 6.2 on the Richter scale at the center of TaiDong, the city where we were. It was my first time experiencing an earthquake. I was lucky that it was only for a short time. I was told later that the hotel could have been destroyed if it shook longer.

In that morning, we have been to San Sian Tai which is a small offshore island connected to the mainland by a 8-slope pedestrian bridge. The bridge has 311 steps (both up & down) in total. There is a folk legend saying that the island and another two islands were actually the same island but they were split because the anger of the Crutch Li (Li Tie Guai), one of the legendary Eight Immortals. The story started when Lu Dong Bin, the most handsome immortal, was in love with He Xian Gu, the fairy maiden. Both of them had an appointment on the island. Li Tie Guai was upset seeing that, he then hit the island by his crutch. The first hit divided the island into two, but it didn’t hurt Lu Dong Bin and He Xian Gu. The couple ran away. Li Tie Guai was still upset and hit the island again. So, the island was finally divided into three. There is also a trace of Lu Dong Bin’s foot there. (The trace of his another foot is at Fu Jian province, main land China.)

We were told that we should collect the special heart-shape stones which have three colors (but I didn’t look for one ‘cos I only had an interest in taking pictures of the beautiful scenarios)

• The Yellow stone = Wealthy and success in Career
• The Red stone = Success in love
• The White stone = Good relationships (with friends)

In the afternoon we headed to Ba Sian Dong (“Ba” = 8; “Sian” = the immortals; “Dong” = cave). The place is a mountain that consists of eight caves around. Each cave is the house of each immortal. We would have needed more than 2 hours to be able to visit all of them (not including return trip), but we didn’t have enough time to visit all the caves. We only visited six of them. There we had to climb up using the wooden steps. I was very tired but it’s another place that is worth visiting.


In the evening, we headed to Hua Lien which is the Mochi city. They dropped us at a big Mochi shop. We tasted everything again. I bought only a pack as I already bought a lot from the tea plant.


We then moved to a beautiful hotel, but it was not in the town. The hotel provided bus service to go to the center of the town, but there were only two buses for all of us and the groups of senior tourists. I asked the hotel employee if there were interesting things there. It looked like the only famous things there were stones and mochi, so I didn’t bother being packed in the bus. I spent the evening surfing the Internet.