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Index
Introduction / Why this post, and how to get there / Gallery: Jingying Hot Spring Before the Disaster of 2023 / Long Love Lost: Ruins of Lover's (Qingren) Suspension Bridge (情人吊橋) / Gallery: Lover's (Qingren) Suspension Bridge Before the Disaster / A Trip Back in Time: Galleries of what Jingying Once Was / Gallery: Jingying Waterfall (DESTROYED) / Gallery Jingying # 2 Hot Spring (BURIED) / Gallery: Up to Yunhai Hot Spring (BURIED) / Gallery: Yunhai Hot Spring (BURIED) / The Nitty-Gritty (GPS, GPX, map, and more)
Tailuwan Hot Spring Area Map
"No mater how I tried, though, I somehow managed to touch it every single time. It swayed there ominously above my head like some massive, blunt, and threatening sword of Damocles..."
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The Map Room's Map of Hot Springs in Taiwan
Welcome to The Map Room's Renai Weekend Escapes series!
This is the third in a series of articles about the many, easy, novice and beginner level hot springs in the Renai area in Nantou, Taiwan (台灣南投縣仁愛鄉). You could easily take in several of these in one weekend, or just sit back, relax, and chill out at any one of them you like. Enjoy!
Hot springs in this series:
Renai Weekend Escapes 1: Tailuwan Hot Spring (太魯灣野溪溫泉) Novice
Renai Weekend Escapes 3: Jingying Hot Spring, Then and Now (精英野溪溫泉) Novice
Renai Weekend Escapes 4: Ruiyan and Hongxiang Hot Springs - Two for One! (瑞岩野溪溫泉和紅香室內溫泉) Novice
Introducing this week's adventure:
Jingying Hot Spring 2024: Paradise Lost
Why this post, and how to get there?
This week's post is a bit different. It's not only about Jingying Hot Spring (精英野溪溫泉) - yes, it DOES still exist - but about the wonders that were once to be found there, but now only live on in pictures, videos, and memories. Many wonders were destroyed forever during a typhoon in 2023 and, while Jingying is still worth visiting, it is now a shadow of its former self and will never be the same again.
So first, the good news: Jingying Hot Spring does still exist! As of February 2024, there was one large, warm pool right next to a vast campable area. The spring is not super hot, but for anyone like me who likes it slightly less hot than most people, it is perfect.
Many people don't understand the absolute, raw power of nature, and even for those who do, it is often much more abstract than concrete.
Seeing changes on the scale of what happened at Jingying, though, really hammers the point home: Mother Nature
Below are some select pictures from Jingying Hot Spring as it was before the typhoon of 2023. Perhaps fittingly, for something that is now only a ghostly apparition of the past, these have not been edited. Rather, they are a few I have selected from a collection that I had put together for a post on Jingying Hot Spring before the disaster, but that never quite got published.
GALLERY (UNEDITED PICTURES):
Jingying Hot Spring before the disaster of 2023
Life got in the way, and I had to delay the Jingying post. I had planned to revisit the area, update my photos and information, and publish it during the 2024 hot spring season. In a way, that's what this is... but nobody could have imagined then that things would have changed so much in a year!
Long Love Lost: Ruins of Lover's (Qingren) Suspension Bridge (情人吊橋)
To get to Jingying, of course, you will have to drive over the car bridge. However, there was once a suspension bridge - Lovers', or Qingren, Suspension Bridge - which was totally destroyed during the storm. When I visited in February of 2024, though, the leftover, skeletal remains of the devastated bridge were still in place. Here are some pictures:
The old way down on the near side of the bridge was totally blocked off in such a way that not even scooters could get down.
I crossed the driving bridge, taking in the devastation as I went.
Once on the other side, I quickly found this way to climb down just to the left (below).
This way is shorter, but you have to pass directly under the hanging hulk of the end of the suspension bridge to get down. Having determined that it was secure enough for the time being (and admittedly probably against wiser judgement), I passed under it several times during my stay there.
No mater how I tried, though, I somehow managed to touch it every single time. It swayed there ominously above my head like some massive, blunt, and threatening sword of Damocles. Don't worry, though, you can easily just follow the road down a couple minutes, look for the backhoe blocking off a road down to the riverside, and walk to the hot spring in a matter of minutes.
IMPORTANT!
EVERYTHING below this point and above the beginning of the Nitty-Gritty section is from before the 2023 typhoon and HAS BEEN DESTROYED! It has been included as a record and reflection on what has been lost.
GALLERY (UNEDITED): Lover's (Qingren) Suspension Bridge (情人吊橋) before the disaster
Don't be put off from visiting JIngying, though. It's easy - and safe - to get to. I even saw an elderly woman with no outdoors experience walk down and relax in the hot spring!
A Trip Back in Time: Galleries of what Jingying Once Was
Now, if you're only here for information about Jingying as it exists today, this is the point at which you should just skip down to the Nitty Gritty section for practical, up to date information. But if you have any interest in revisiting the past (or visiting it for the first time), please enjoy these galleries of unedited photos.
