Alishan

PeaksChiayi,Taiwan

A Taiwanese mountain forest of thousand-year-old cypresses the loggers never reached, climbed by a narrow-gauge railway that spirals and zigzags 2,200 metres up.

September·Quiet month

Jul–Sep

The wettest stretch: a cool 14°C refuge from the lowland heat, but afternoon storms and typhoons cloud the dawn and leave the sea of clouds unreliable. Nothing shuts — the grove, the lodgings and the few daily trains run year-round, though heavy rain can suspend the railway.

Year-round The thousand-year red-cypress grove and the 1912 forest railway are here every day; the cherries, fireflies, autumn maples and the sea of clouds are what keep a calendar.

Alishan is a mountain forest in Chiayi county, in central Taiwan, of red cypresses a thousand and more years old that the loggers never reached, climbed by a narrow-gauge railway of 1912 that spirals and zigzags 2,200 metres up from the plain, and it is the island's classic dawn, watched from the highest station in Taiwan as the sun comes up over a sea of cloud. The Japanese built the line to bring the cypress down to Chiayi, seventy kilometres through fifty tunnels and four switchbacks, and it now carries passengers the other way, through three climate belts from banana to cypress, with a shuttle train climbing in the dark to Zhushan at 2,451 metres, where the crowd waits at the railing for the sun to clear the ridge of Yushan and light the cloud packed white in the valleys below; the cloud sea is most reliable from October through the winter, when the northeast monsoon packs it against the range. Raised boardwalks loop through the cypresses the saws left standing, the largest 43 metres tall and thirteen around at the base, and for most of the last century the mountain's great draw was a single cypress over 3,000 years old, the sacred tree, laid down in 1998. The Japanese foresters also planted cherries, and the mountain holds the largest stand of Yoshino in Taiwan, some 18,000 trees among 31 varieties that come to full flush in the second half of March. The mountain is the homeland of the Tsou, an Austronesian people of about 6,700 whose hunting grounds the logging concession was cut through, and the tea houses sit lower down among the terraces at Shizhuo, where the fog that pools below the sunrise platform is what makes the oolong. From April into June fireflies fill the wooded slopes below the forest line, and in late October the maples redden around the temples. Alishan is a forest a railway was built to cut, and the train now brings people to look at what it left.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Only a handful of trains a day make the full mountain run — and the pre-dawn shuttle up to Zhushan is sold out most nights, so the road is the fallback.
A sea of clouds is a condition, not a schedule — your odds jump on the morning after a front clears, and whenever the day-to-night temperature gap is wide.
Alishan's thickest tree is not on the giant-tree boardwalk — the Shuishan cypress, over sixteen metres around, stands 1.6 kilometres along the old logging line behind Zhaoping Station.
The giant-tree boardwalk empties the moment the sunrise crowd heads back down — that hour is the quietest the grove gets, and the light under the canopy is at its best.
Dress for winter even in July — Zhushan sits near 2,450 metres, and the pre-dawn air there runs several degrees colder than the village you walked out of.

Things to do

1
Wait for the cloud sea to catch light at Zhushan
A shuttle train climbs in the dark to Zhushan, at 2,451 metres Taiwan's highest station. The wait ends when the sun clears the Yushan range and lights the cloud lying in the valleys below the platform. Ten minutes on foot past the station, the Ogasawara deck at 2,488 metres gives a 360-degree version of the same view with a fraction of the crowd.
2
Ride the 1912 logging line through its four switchbacks
Built to bring cypress down to Chiayi, the narrow-gauge line now carries passengers the other way. On the climb it spirals a full loop around Dulishan, then works up a staircase of four zigzags. The train reverses direction at each one, so you ride backwards and forwards in turn as the mountain drops away below the window.
3
Stand beneath the cypresses the saws never reached
Raised boardwalks loop through the red cypresses the loggers left standing, the largest of them 43 metres tall and 13 metres around at the base. Moss and ferns climb the bark, and the air under the canopy stays cold and still even at midday.
4
Walk under 18,000 Yoshino cherries
Japanese foresters planted the cherries a century ago, and Alishan now holds Taiwan's largest stand of Yoshino — some 18,000 trees among 31 varieties on the mountain. The bloom opens at the lower spots first, Zhaoping Station and the old police post, and the Yoshino come to full flush in the second half of March. On festival weekends the mountain road is closed to private cars through the morning.
5
Drink the oolong in the cloud belt that grows it
The tea houses sit down among the terraces at Shizhuo and along the road up, not at the summit. They pour the local high-mountain oolong in rounds from a small clay pot — pale gold, thick in the mouth, floral rather than bitter — often from bushes you can see through the window.
6
Walk the firefly slopes after dark
From April into June the wooded slopes below the forest line fill with fireflies — the Alishan area holds around 42 species, roughly two-thirds of Taiwan's low- and mid-altitude firefly fauna. Tsou and other local communities lead the night walks, torches down, letting your eyes adjust until the whole hillside blinks.

Watch

Nearby

40 km