While many tourists stop in Chiayi City only long enough to board the Alisan Forest Railway, I recently discovered another part of Chiayi County, not far from the main train station that connects Taipei with Alisan by rail, and a day trip from Chiayi City out to the nearby Minschiung campus of NCCU is worth the time.

Hundreds of college campuses dot Taiwan’s landscape, some built in cramped, urban areas and others in remote, rural environments. But the NCCU campus is one of the most picturesque university campuses on the island.

Built on a series of rolling hills overlooking the Chainan (嘉南) Plain and featuring a scenic little lake filled with black swans, NCCU has in recent years become something of a weekend tourist attraction for city dwellers from Taipei and Kaohsiung, who often take the scenic drive out to the hilly campus to view the award-winning architecture, the famous arched bridge and the leafy campus grounds. A gourmet coffee shop called “Poco a Poco” near the NCCU bookstore is also a popular tourist attraction, since it is owned and run by a bearded coffee maven named Lang Yu-ping, son of the famous photographer Long Chin-san.

“Poco a Poco” serves gourmet coffee made with a vintage espresso machine imported from Italy, and it is open for tourists on weekends from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., according to Lang. In addition to espresso and cappuccino, the cafe also serves coffee on ice cream, coffee sorbet and other coffee specialties devised by Lang and his campus crew. If you visit the cafe on a weekday or a weekend, you are likely to see groups of students from the philosophy and literature departments sipping coffee, reading newspapers, chatting with classmates or typing on their laptops. The inside of the cafe is air-conditioned, and a wide veranda overlooking the nearby lake affords a nice fresh-air view of the leafy campus, according to Lang. National Chung Cheng University has a student population of about 10,000 people who come from all over the island, including undergraduate and graduate students.

NCCU was the first public university established after Taiwan’s economic boom in the 1980s and was named, as it Chinese name explains, after former ROC president Chiang Kai-Shek. It first opened its doors in 1989, and because of its strong visual appeal has served as a shooting location for several national TV commercials. In fact, a feature film shot at NCCU in 2005 and titled “My Fair Lady” was directed by Taipei movie director Alex Yang. The film played in movie theaters islandwide and then went to DVD as well, according to Yang, who took his production crew and stars to NCCU for two months to make the movie there.

Cherry Wang, 25, is a graduate student from Taoyuan who has been attending NCCU for three years, working on a masters degree in Taiwanese Literature.

She said that while she misses the big city action of Taipei, she enjoys living in a quiet, relaxed town like Minschiung, where students from around the island have turned rural, rustic NCCU into a popular — and much photographed — university. After a leisurely stroll around the campus lake, a picturesque spot with black-necked swans rollicking in the water, a walk over the solid three-arch bridge — called Tranquility Bridge — will bring you to a perfect vantage point to watch the setting sun over the western coast of Taiwan. Bring you camera, by all means, and remember, on your way to visit Alisan, a quiet day trip to NCCU in Chiayi County will be something to write home about.

GETTING THERE:

By air: From Chiayi Airport, there is regular taxi service and bus service to Minschiung Township, where the university campus is located.

By train: Daily train service to Minschiung train station from Taipei or Kaoshiung, with taxi service and bus service to the university campus near the train station.

By car: Get off the north-south freeway near Chiayi City at the Dalin(大林) interchange, and then drive east on National Route 162 to Campus Drive for about ten minutes to arrive at the main CCU gate.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Call the CCU office at (05) 272-0411 or visit http://www.ccu.edu.tw