Taiwan - Taroko Gorge (TW-34228)

This beautiful card shows the Taroko Gorge, located in the Taroko National Park in the East of Taiwan. I read a bit more about this country several days ago, when I got a Taiwanese address to send an official card to (of course, that's not the first one, but sometimes I don't notice interesting things immediatelly). I found it a bit strange that most of big cities and main roads are located on the West coast of Taiwan. Then I learned, that there were high mountains with wonderful landscapes in the Central and Eastern part of the island. I may know all the countries and their capital cities, but I'm still a bit ignorant, when it comes to physic geography of continents other than Europe. But I'll improve it, I promise :)

TW-34228

Taroko National Park (traditional Chinese: 太魯閣國家公園; pinyin: Tàilǔgé gúojiā gōngyuán; Taiwanese POJ: Taroko kok-ka kong-hn̂g) is one of the seven national parks in Taiwan and was named after the Taroko Gorge, the landmark gorge of the park. It spans the counties of Hualien, Taichung, and Nantou on the island of Taiwan.

The name, Taroko, means the "magnificent and beautiful". Long ago a tribesman of the Truku aboriginal tribe saw the beauty of the azure Pacific when he walked out of the gorge. Astonished by the elegance of the scene, he cried: "Taroko!". And so it became the name of the place, in fashion not dissimilar to how the island, Formosa, got its name.