南投 猴探井 日晷 A surprise dial at HouTanJing, NanTou, Taiwan

中文讀者請至 http://blog.xuite.net/nycl.chiu/blog/21498077

There was someone posting a picture of horizontal sundial in his web page saying that it was right on the grass behind the visitor center of BaGuaShan scenery park, ZhangHau. From the picture I was sure that the sundial was designed by an expert. There were hour lines as well as calendar lines. The nodus was the finger tip of a boy sitting on the high end of a seesaw while other three boys were on the low end touching the ground. Such a beautiful design for sundial is what I must see in person.
Today is the winter solstice day and the sky is blue. A perfect day to observe a sundial with calendar lines. My wife and I got up early and drove down to BaGuaShan park. Not far from the entrance of the park, about one km, we passed a natural park, which concerns mostly migratory birds who use that area as a rest stop in their journey. Making a right turn along the road, we found a parking lot. The lot keeper pointed out the way to the visitor center to us and said it would take only 5 minute walk to get there, so we parked our car. The way to the visitor center was uphill a little bid. It took 15 minutes for us to walk there.
There was an open space besides the visitor center building. From there one can view the whole ZhangHau city below, so we went over that way trying to reach the grass ground behind the building. The open space turned out to be an open theater but there was no grass ground behind the building. Of course, no sundial either. Astonished, we backed up and got in the visitor center looking for help.
There were five service persons on duty but none of them knew where the sundial was. Even all of them denied that a sundial existed in visitor center area. We were very depressed. Suddenly a service lady (volunteer) said: “I know. The sundial is at HouTanJing, not here. There is another visitor center of BaGuaShan scenery park at HouTanJing.” HouTanJing? I have never heard of that place. The lady unfolded a park map and point out the location of HouTanJing. The park area goes north-south; Zhang Hua is on the north edge and HouTanJing is on the lower quarter. “The road in front of us is road 137. You take south and follow the road. After few turns you’ll see a water supply. Make a left turn there and you‘ll be on road 139. Driving all way down, you’ll see the sign of HouTanChing.” (Ching should pronounce same as Jing. They tends to mean the same word in Chinese.) In my mind, the park had an area around a hundred acres only. But that was the impression I got more than two decades ago. The new map before me showed totally different things. I asked carefully: “How far is that?” “Half hour of driving if you know the road.” I took another look at the map. Yes, she must right. HouTanJing was about 25 km from where we were standing and only 5 km west from NanTou city.
When we arrived HouTanJing, we saw a small house there. It was a visitor center, but not that of BaGuaShan scenery park. We went in the house and found nobody inside. There was one service man in his sixties outside by the vending machine and he was our only hope. Knowing what we were looking for, he said:”The sundial is just over there, only a few steps down the stairs. Today you have to stand on the ‘12/22’ mark on the calendar line.” Wau! I was surprised. Although he did not make it right, it was not easy for an ordinary countryman to knew that today the shadow of the kid’s finger would fall along the ‘12/22’ calendar line. I was so anxious to see the sundial that I did not give him one more minute to introduce it to me. I ran to the stairs with the hope that there was a grass ground in front of them. But I did not have to walk down further, the sundial could be seen right from there. It was a sundial, an analemmatic dial! I was shocked again.


We didn’t mind that it was not the dial we were looking for. But where is that horizontal sundial? We checked web sites again after we came home. It turned out that the information we got the first time was wrong. The sundial is in the visitor center of the natural park where we passed at the beginning before we parked our car in the lot!