A thousand-year-old red cedar hidden deep in the forests of the Mount Ali region, south-central Taiwan, was discovered recently, according to news reaching Hong Kong from Taiwan Monday.
The millennium-old red cedar is the second oldest tree of its kind to be discovered in Taiwan, next only to the 1,229-year-old "Red Cedar King" located beside the Hsingnan Temple in the township of Puli in the central county of Nantou.
The circumference of the trunk of the newly-found red cedar is an impressive 8 meters. In other words, it takes some eight adults to make a circle hand-in-hand around the base of the old giant.
It was reported that the red cedar has probably survived intact and avoided being harmed by vandals, or the so-called "mountain mice," because of the beliefs of the aboriginal people in the nearby region.
Most of the Tsou aboriginal people, who have traditionally made the central Sun Moon Lake and Mount Ali regions their home, believe that red cedars are "the trees of the ghosts," and therefore stay away from them as much as possible.
(Xinhua News Agency October 29, 2002)
