Lishan Nature Travels

Every year when the maple leaves in Lishan start turning fiery red, this sound can be heard everywhere.

But leaves aren��t the only things red things that appear in Autumn and Winter in Lishan, red, ripe and delicious apples are everywhere as well.

Li-Cing-Bin,Apple Farmer:
In order for apples to grow, there must be at least 800 hours in the year where the temperature is below a certain point. Since the elevation in Lishan is quite high, it's pretty cold in the winter, and that makes Lishan the only place in Taiwan which produces apples.

The apples here are so sweet and crisp that I find myself taking bite

after biteafter bite, and liking it so much that I��m even tempted to eat the core.

Former president Chiang Kai-shek used to like coming to Lishan to hike, to think about policy and to get away from hot, muggy Taipei in the summers. This cottage was one of his two retreats here.

When you come to Lishan, there��s a good chance to get to know Atayal culture.

The Atayals used to live in houses like these.

Steven Chen, Atayal Culture expert:
Here in this house, there's something really special about Atayal culture that I want tell you about - burial culture. Listen carefully. Where you're sitting right now, us living people live on top of it, and dead people live underneath it.

This was our first visit to Lishan, and we were constantly wowed by the natural landscape. Towards the end of the year there are red maple leaves and apples. In January and February there are plum and cherry blossoms. March and April, peach and pear blossoms. May apple blossoms. June catsear. And September and October cosmos. With so much on the calendar, what we really want to know now is, can we come back again?