Fanshuiliao

Fanshuiliao is located at the 28-kilometer mark down the Provincial Highway No.11. It offers views of two strongly contrasting types of topography, both created by the Fanshuliao River -- a wide valley made up of accumulated sediment, and a narrow, vertical-walled gorge which has been cut through the mountains by the relentless wearing action of the flowing water. The gorge is somewhat similar to the famous Taroko Gorge, and offers the most remarkable vistas of this type of terrain on the East Coast. A local legend has it that the aborigines living here in the distant past so revered courage that they promised to make chief whoever could vault across the gorge. Many young braves tried, but all fell to their death. The bamboo poles that they used in their attempts survived, however, becoming a living bamboo grove that still thrives in the gorge today.