The moon worlds of Kaohsiung County

The Americans call this type of landscape “badlands,” but to the Taiwanese they’re more like the surface of the moon: “Lunar World,” as they call them. These strange landscapes of barren clay soil eroded into bizarre knife-edge ridges, sharp pinnacles and graceful, curved arcs are a strangely beautiful if surreal element of the landscape in parts of northern Kaohsiung and southern Tainan Counties.

Badlands landscapes are by no means unique to this region of Taiwan. Anyone who’s motored along freeway one between Miaoli and Taichung cities will have passed and maybe admired the magnificent moonscape of Fire Mountain (火炎山), just south of the town of Sanyi, while there are several examples in the east-coast county of Taitung. To see Taiwan’s most impressive, photogenic and extensive “lunar world” landscapes, however, look no further than the Kaohsiung/Tainan county border area.

Perhaps the best known of all is the area called Tianliao Moon World (田寮月世界), on route 184, three kilometers east of Tianliao village. This area is easily accessible (there’s no need to even leave the car, as there’s a good view of the entire landscape from the busy main road), but various ungainly additions to the landscape, such as wide, elevated concrete walkways and ornamental concrete pavilions crowned with sickle moons, rob the landscape of its natural beauty. The place more resembles a children’s playground built in an old quarry than the fascinating natural curiosity that it is.

Head instead for Caoshan (草山), 15 kilometers north, and Taiwan’s largest expanse of badlands landscape. Caoshan is a small settlement at the northern end of an isolated, five-kilometer-long ridge rising out of the otherwise featureless lowlands of southern Tainan County. The area is very popular with tourists, most of whom head for the 308 Viewpoint (308高地, named after its height, in meters, above sea level). This is as good a place as any to begin an exploration of the bizarre landscape that lies just to the north.

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