Looking back on my life, the past plays like a film, scene after scene in my mind.
This year's Taitung Expo takes the "slow economy" as its theme. Combined with the hot-air balloon festival during the summer holidays, it showcases what Taitung has achieved in recent years, using downtown Taitung itself as an exhibition ground without walls.
In an age full of AI products and the pursuit of speed, everything is about efficiency and output, and time is money. In Taitung, by contrast, "slowness and warmth" have grown into a lifestyle all their own — slowness can create economic growth, overturning conventional thinking. It all comes from Taitung turning its weaknesses into strengths.
When I host travellers in Taitung, I often tell them that Taitung is "the place left over for others to pick up" (as we say in Taiwanese). Because of the terrain, Taitung is hard to reach: travellers visit Taroko Gorge in Hualien and head back to Taipei, or pass straight through Taitung to Kenting, with only the occasional curious one or two staying a night. It is no exaggeration to call it left over. Yet precisely because of this, Taitung was never over-commercialised — and thanks to everyone's efforts in recent years, it has become the top choice for a slow economy city.
Fortunes turn: ten years on the east bank of the river, ten years on the west.
Even before the pandemic, the Taitung County Government was promoting the slow economy. When the pandemic struck and everyone's life was forced to pause and slow down, that long-accumulated slow energy came into its own: Taitung's beautiful mountains, clean water and healthy living became the benchmark of a slow economy that accelerated after the pandemic.
Today, more and more people are reflecting on lives spent in high-pressure jobs, sacrificing their health at the cost of life itself — until, as the saying goes, "the person is in heaven and the money is in the bank". It is truly sobering!
Many people have found their lost selves again, bit by bit, through Taitung's slowness.
In recent years Taitung has drawn office workers and retirees from western Taiwan to stay for long periods and eventually move here. It has also drawn young people back home, or to Taitung for the first time, to start businesses. Stories like these are everywhere — along the coast, in the East Rift Valley and on the South Link route.
I once hosted a Chinese-American family of four for just three days and two nights. They all loved Taitung's slowness, and the two home-schooled children especially loved the beaches.
During the trip the family agreed not to leave before 10 every morning, just to make the most of breakfast together — so that family education carried on as part of their travels.
In sharing these stories, all I want to say is: travel with care, and it really will change the rhythm of your life.
Travellers, you are welcome to visit the Expo in Taitung from 3 July to 20 August. If you already love Taitung, you must come; if you don't know it yet, all the more reason to come.
A warning 🔔 Taitung's soil is very sticky: fall for its slow life, and retirees may end up moving here — and young singles may end up with a whole new life, partner and all!
