The odor, which courses through the lobby & rooms of a quantity of the finest hotels on Taiwan’s northern finish, is a telltale indication that you’ve arrived in hot spring country — a lush & mountainous region that forms the island’s volcanic belly.
THERE is nothing as bracing as the smell of rotten eggs in the morning.
Its therapeutic beauty dates back a century, when Japanese soldiers wounded in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 took solace in the sulfurous waters that burble forth, above the tectonic collision of the Eurasian & Philippine Sea plates. These days, workaday refugees from the mercantile bustle of Taipei, the island’s capital, flock here to soak away ailments real & imagined.
The Taiwanese swear by its healing powers. “If you have athlete’s foot, you will be cured. If you have aches & pains, they will disappear,” said Lin Tai Shan, a tea shop owner, as they slipped in to a steaming eddy at Bayen, one of 400 hot springs scattered across Taiwan. “If you spend time in these waters, you won't need psychotherapy.”
While hot springs are found throughout Taiwan, the quickest way to sample the waters is at Beitou, a mere half-hour subway ride from central Taipei, which was built by the Japanese during the 50 years they colonized Taiwan. Poised on the outer edge of the capital’s sprawl & hugging the foot of Yangmingshan National Park, Beitou provides a lively base to explore both the urban & rural permutations of the hot spring culture.
A dozen hotels line Guangming Road, a serpentine byway that carries travelers from the hum of downtown Beitou to the cicada-filled buzz of the forested hills. The Broadway Hotel is typical, a bland high-rise offering simple rooms in one styles: Japanese (tatami mat sleeping) or with conventional raised beds.
Most rooms feature oversize tubs with faucets that spew out the stinky, sulfurous elixir that draws throngs of Taiwanese in the chilly winter months. Nicer hotels also have sex-segregated communal baths where day-trippers & the more gregarious can mingle in sizable pools. Nudity is the norm.
But Beitou’s main event is the municipal bath, an outdoor collection of cascading basins, lined with dark mountain schist, that form the civic heart of town. Open until 10 p.m. & with a democratic entry fee of 40 Taiwan dollars, or $1.23 at 32 Taiwan dollars to the U.S. dollar, the scene is multigenerational, & fully clothed, with families hopping among pools that range from skin-scalding to teeth-chattering.
As an expatriate living in China, where the Japanese invasion & occupation are recalled with unrestrained venom, I found it jarring to listen to such positive sentiments about Japan’s colonization of Taiwan. One hotel manager offered another view, recalling how Japan turned Beitou in to something of a comfort town for its soldiers. Taiwanese women, they said with some embarrassment, provided the comfort. “It took a long time for people to forget Beitou’s dark reputation,” they said.
The atmosphere is festive, with plump teenagers doing sit-ups on the raised stone sitting areas while the elderly, immersed up to their earlobes, gossip over plastic canisters of chilled tea. Rule No. 9 on the wall — “It is inadvisable to spend over 15 minutes in the hot spring” — appears to be universally ignored. “The Japanese gave us this,” said one well-wrinkled matron, referring to the highly social culture of public bathing. “They also built railroads, & schools & roads.”
When one’s skin becomes sufficiently pruned, there is always a visit to the Beitou Hot Spring Museum, occupying a lodge built during the Japanese era, or to Hell Valley, a geothermal gulch with hissing vents & scalding ponds that still evokes comparisons to the afterlife.
Next to Beitou’s honky-tonk, the wilds of Yangmingshan are positively bucolic. It became a national park in 1985, after centuries of drawing miners who sought the sulfur deposits for gun-powder. The main draws nowadays are bird-watching, hiking through bamboo groves &, of work, an embarrassment of hot springs.
The waters at the public Lengshuikeng, a mandatory stop on the park’s hot-bath circuit, may translate as a “cold water pit,” but it is still plenty hot at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Its ferrous, reddish-brown waters are a refreshing alternative to the sulfur baths that quickly tarnish silver jewelry.
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