Taiwan: Taroko’s marble gorge, Penghu’s shihu weirs, the Alishan railway

Taroko’s terrain spans from the coast to Nanhu Mountain, whose summit stands at 3,742 m. The National Park Service lists its area as about 92,000 hectares and its founding date as 28 November 1986. A 2005 study used chlorine-36 exposure ages from the gorge’s marble to estimate river incision during the middle and late Holocene at 26 ± 3 mm per year. The authors describe that as a maximum estimate: the calculation assumes the gorge walls did not retreat after the river carved them.[1][2]

Penghu’s shihu vary by design and setting. Luo and co-authors map arched forms mainly along the west and south coasts, while barriers with one or two rooms cluster around central and northern tidal flats. Their 2018 Google Earth inventory identified 539 weirs, 91% of the 592 structures in the field-checked reference catalogue. The paper separately notes that 14 weirs in the archipelago are longer than 1,000 m.[3]

The railway operator’s station pages place Chiayi at 30 m and Alishan at 2,216 m; they also list the forest railway’s 762 mm gauge beside Taiwan Railway’s 1,067 mm track on Chiayi’s first platform. The operator’s mileage table gives 71.60 km between Chiayi and Alishan, while a separate introduction page gives 71.4 km for the main line. Its station guide says Erwanping was the terminal when the railway began operating in 1912. In 2019, the Ministry of Culture designated Alishan Forestry and Railway an Important Cultural Landscape.[4][5][6]