Beitou Park

This guide to Beitou Park in Taipei starts in 1905, when a Japanese technician named Okamoto Yohachiro kept finding his glass photographic plates mysteriously fogged near the stream running through the park. You'll hear how he traced the problem to strange glowing crystals on the rocks upstream, and how those crystals earned a name at an international science conference. The guide also traces the path upstream toward Thermal Valley, the boiling, sulfurous pools this park was built as a calm gateway to.