From late spring to early summer when the snow-white Tung flowers bloom everywhere in the mountains, it is the best time for families to join the Tucheng Tung Blossom Festival to enjoy walking amidst the Tung flowers and trees. To enhance visitors' interaction with the nature, the festival provides such activities as tree climbing, hiking, sketching, stamps at certain spots, and ecological tours led by professional botanical guides. Come visit Tucheng to understand the cultural history and cultivating methods of the Tung flowers! Additionally, visitors have the opportunities to enjoy the diabolo shows and other music, dance and folk artistry events. Visitors will experience not only the natural beauty but also the artistic feast! After visiting the natural scenes, the Tucheng line of the mass rapid transit system will take you and your family to have great fun by visiting Tucheng!
Start from the Jenan Temple (100-meter blue dragon) →Yijong Cemetery→ wooden footway over the Shih Bi Liao creek→ carriage road of Tung flowers → Shihbiliao creek→ footway of water (alameda, temple and fire Marabutan) Mt. Shihkung entrance→ entrance image of Tung flowers park → Chengtian alameda→ Chengtian temple→ theme park of Tung flowers → Shansi Temple→ Puan courtroom
The Tung Tree
The Tung tree (aleurites cordata), a kind of deciduous trees, slender in shape, with horizontal tree crowns and thick branches and leaves is suitable for landscape or road decoration. It can also be used as materials for construction or musical instruments. The high waterproof oil extracted from its fruits is the ideal materials for paints and printing inks.
In late spring, the Tung blossoms put a white dancing suit on the green mountain peak, the flowers dancing with the wind just like snows. In summer the tung trees are not as cute and soft as the snowflakes, but exceptionally lively with the birds' and cicadas' singing. In autumn, the earth-yellowish branches and leaves of tung tree are graceful. A walk into a tung-tree forest in late autumn makes one have a silently feeling with the autumnal tide. In winter, the tung tree hibernates, its leaves thoroughly fall off, and its twigs and branches are bare. Seeing how the flower bloom and wither is overwhelming. Visitors are sensitized to the unique seasonal mutation of the tung trees.
The Tung Blossom Park Located between the Chengtian Temple and Mt. Tianshang, the park provides multi-function recreational facilities such as an outdoor stage, a charcoal kiln exhibition, a tea-drinking platform, a scenery-viewing platform overlooking the Tucheng City, a deltoid drawbridge and a cubic crawling net for children, and a firefly preservation area. During the day one can enjoy hundreds of Tung trees and cherry blossoms, while at night fireflies dance. All these help one forget, even if transiently, all the pressures of life, by being close to the nature.
The green-tiled and white-walled Chengtian Temple, facing south, is situated in the lap of Mt. Chinyuang, with solemn outlook. From the Dasyong Buddhist Palace one can take a clear view of the Taipei basin. Every morning and evening, worshippers swarm the quiet paths to do prayers, while the crowds flood in over the weekends. The 900-meter-long Chentian mountain alameda is paved with stones, stelas, stone carvings and steles on both sides, posing an awesome atmosphere along the way. This is a principal way to watching the Tung flowers as well as the key entrance to the Tianshang mountain area. Based on the geographical traits of hills all around, the Tucheng City Government designs numerous thematic trails such as the maple alameda and the firefly alameda, through which visitors can take a relaxing forest shower!
At the museum of ancient-flavor peanut sweets, one can see the production and history of nougats, as well as the wedding customs of Chinese people intended to imbibe into the younger generations such traditional Chinese virtues as "remembering the ancestors" and "the filial piety."
