嘉和遮體

Jiahe Railway Tunnel

June 12th, 2015

A tunnel on the coastal plains of Pingtung — A railway tunnel on the coastal plains of Pingtung.

Here is yet another roadside curiosity in the deep south of Taiwan: a false tunnel on the coastal plains of Fangshan, Pingtung. It doesn’t cut through any mountainside nor is it built to withstand landslides. It’s just an 1,180 meter tunnel that trains pass through for no discernible reason. I first read about this on Michael Turton’s blog and later saw it on my first round-the-island bicycle tour. More recently I took a spin around the southern loop once more, and spent a little extra time examining this concrete oddity in an attempt to divine its purpose.

The railway bunker from a distance — The north end of the false tunnel from a distance.

At first I was working with the idea that it’s yet another Japanese colonial era military structure much like the anti-aircraft turret that I had chanced upon previously. It didn’t look quite so old—but it’s made out of concrete and might have been renovated at some point given that it is still in active use.

More than a kilometer long — The tunnel stretches for more than a kilometer.

Like most of these small mysteries all it took was for me to transcribe the characters on the plaque over the entrance: Jiāhé Zhētǐ (嘉和遮體). Google hasn’t been any help in translating this name—perhaps “Jiahe Railway Tunnel” might suffice? At any rate, knowing the formal name opens up a tremendous amount of information in the Chinese language blogosphere, for instance here, here, here.

The south entrance to the false tunnel in Fangshan — The southern entrance to the false tunnel in Fangshan.

From the aforementioned links I’ve been able to puzzle out what this place is really for. It was completed in 1991 to shield passing trains from the navy’s live ammunition tests on the hillside beyond—hence the added bulk on the seaward side of the tunnel. By that time some genius had come up with a better idea than building a false tunnel more than a kilometer long: why not shoot at some other target that doesn’t have passenger trains running in front? Naval exercises were moved further south to someplace in Hengchun nowhere near the railway system and from the sounds of it this garish, improbable monstrosity never saw any use whatsoever (apart from lining the pockets of some contractor somewhere).

Map

Points

North Entrance (北口)—Public (公有)
South Entrance (南口)—Public (公有)

Themes

Railways in Taiwan (臺灣鐵路建設)
Military Fortifications in Taiwan (台灣碉堡)

Series: Southern Taiwan Ride 2015

This series chronicles a multi-day bicycle trip around the deep south of Taiwan, specifically from Tainan to Taitung in June 2015. Along the way I visited many places in Kaohsiung and especially Pingtung. A lot of what I saw and experienced hasn’t been written about in English very much so I’ve taken some extra time to provide background information to better contextualize what’s in the many photographs in this series. Altogether this is a complete trip journal clocking in at around 20,000 words from start to finish!