921 Earthquake Memorial

Lying on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Taiwan is subject to some of the world’s nastiest catastrophes. Earthquakes and typhoons are a regular occurrence here, and the danger of of another disaster is always at hand. A quick search on Wiki reveals that Taiwan has experienced 44 major earthquakes since 1906, an average of once every 2.3 years.

The most recent major earthquake in Taiwan was in 2006, which in spite of having a whopping 7.1 magnitude claimed only two lives. Other quakes have not been so generous, with the most infamous being the 921 quake from 1999, which struck in the the middle of the night and claimed more than 2,400 lives and seriously injured another 11,000. Of course knowing all this is not very comforting, especially knowing that the epicenter of that quake was very nearby and Nok and I live on the top of a 14 story apartment building.

On Saturday Nok and I returned to Dakeng Scenic Area in the hopes that we could find some new trails and not get rained out. We got of the bus at a different spot this time and walked into a nicely groom park nestled into the hills which we presumed would be the entrance to one of the hiking trails. As we walked towards the back of the park, searching for a path into the mountains, we came across an old abandoned school which was cordoned off by a fence with occasional picture displays with written Chinese.

We guessed that the school was important for some reason, but couldn’t yet figure out why. As we walked along the building, we began to notice that the walls were finely cracked from floor to ceiling in many places, and the building was actually leaning to the left. Then we came across a monster of a gap torn into on of the buildings pillars, nearly separating the building into two pieces from the ground to the roof. Across from this gaping wound, we were shocked to see an old concrete path on the ground with a jagged 6 inch gap carved out of the middle, and we instantly realized what this place was.

Turns out, the school had been abandoned after that infamous 921 quake, and the area surrounding it had now been turned into a somber memorial.

The giant crack. Notice the smaller cracks nearby and the slant of the building towards the left. It’s pretty amazing the building didn’t collapse altogether.

Coming from such a geologically tame place as Maine, seeing this giant crack in the ground was like something out of a movie. It wasn’t hard to see how this quake had completely destroyed more than 44,000 homes and seriously damaged another 41,000.

We returned to the weird little obstacle-course park in Dakeng, and Nok had a go up this wall. It was a lot higher than it looks here.

Hiking in Taiwan has so far proved to be a rather frustrating endeavor. The hills and mountains are full of promising-looking trails that take you just under the ridge line and just fizzle out into impassable jungle. This was me venturing to the top of the ridge in the hopes I could find a walkable trail, but all I found was thick jungle full of tangly vines and dense brush.

From this viewing platform, the very edge of Taichung city can be barely made out straight ahead in the distance.

A view away from the city. Through the clouds, you can barely catch a glimpse of the much larger mountains beyond.

Chinese lanterns like this are a common sight throughout Taiwan.

Nok and I from another viewing platform in Dakeng.

Afterwards, we headed into Taichung City and spent some time in Taichung Park. It was actually a rather nice park, and quite large. A political rally for this month’s presidential election was just beginning inside the park, but sadly my camera batteries died before I reached it.

I have no idea why, but this giant goat statue was in the park just behind the Taichung City Library. The library here is brilliant, by the way, but that’s for another post.