Tuesday 29 December 2015

A Few Odd Shots At Sun Moon Lake

The Pagoda, built by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) for his mother, sometime before eight in the morning. It was from the tenth floor of this pagoda, which sits on top of a hill on the lake's eastern shoreline, that I took my panorama shots of the lake.

Water enters the lake here from a tunnel. Confusingly, the information signs mention the existence of two such tunnels, an original one built by the Japanese, and a new one completed in 2006. The confusion arises as no explanation is given for the relation between the two tunnels. As I later found out, the newer one was built to replace the old one as the concrete had been damaged by decades of sediments passing through it. In addition however, I also discovered that there is, in fact, a third tunnel, but that it does not enter Sun Moon Lake. That will be the subject of my next trip to Nantou.

From the board-walk around the lake looking north-eastward across the reeds growing out of the lake's sediment deposits toward the (invisible) tunnel entry point.

A locally famous frog-sculpture indicating the water level of the lake; there are nine frogs in total stacked one on top of another.

Tourist trap: the island in the approximate center of the lake which is said to have been sacred to a local aborigine tribe. Note all the tourist boats crowding around it for a better look.

The same island minus the tourist boats; note the two deer-head sculptures on the north side, and the ruins of a house. 

Looking westward across the lake to the two water gate towers on the western shoreline. From here, water exits the lake via large pipelines down the hillsides to the several hydroelectric power plants at Minghu reservoir, Mingtan reservoir and further downstream in the little town of Shueili.  

Looking southward to the eastern slope on top of which sits the pagoda I had climbed at the beginning of the morning.

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