Compared to the massive bulk of China, at first glance Taiwan looks like a tiny rock off the coast of the continent, where steep gorges cut the volcanic mountains into sharp bits, and push the population into bustling hubs of life on the rare plains. But standing in the middle of one such plain, the one that now hosts the nearly ten million people of Taipei, surrounded by ridge of peaks round like a crown, the island feels everything but small.

When the Portuguese first washed up on its rocky shores, probably dehydrated and starving, far removed from their Catholic kingdom, on a voyage for spices, gold, and slaves, they wandered into the dense forests of the island, searching for its fruit and whatever else appeared edible. Confronted by orchids of every colour, only matched in brightness by chaotic clouds of butterflies, and outmatched in artistry only by the song of hundreds of birds, they returned to their native Portugal loaded, not with gold, spices, or slaves, but with tales of an island they had baptised Formosa. ‘Beautiful’

History has passed and rubbed out old names, replaced them with something new, blowing the eraser dust into the Pacific where it turned into the foam atop cresting waves. It brought along guns, and where it brought guns, soon there followed war, colonisation, something akin to liberation, and in its wake, an uneasy peace.

But despite the rough sketches cut into the surface of the island by many a man who thought himself great, ordinary people treated the land with a gentler hand. Guided by an instinct perhaps so deeply part of our being that we share it with everything that breathes, cloven hands, worn with age but energetic as ever, cared for the mountain, her murmuring streams and hidden valleys.

In a place where rain and sun both bless the land so abundantly that any seed dropped into the fertile black soil would soon develop into a laden orchard, the quietly shuffling people who live between the old trees of the volcano chose not to grow crops of any kind, not to harness the land, cut it up with silver ploughs to reap plentiful harvests from its generous constitution. Instead, opposed to reason, logic, and rationality, they chose a different course.

North of Taipei there is a mountain with streams so clear that hundreds of golden fish swim in the silvery water. The gurgles run their web-like course through vast stretches of carefully cultivated land, down from the terraces, cutting through small plateaus, in search of the sea. Here, the worn hands with grimy fingernails have planted the entire peak with millions of white lilies, every fertile inch home to a perfect, pure flower. A sea of white spring feeling, where the butterflies sunbathe on the petals, sharing this land of plenty with slow bumble bees and hovering dragonflies.