Xitou Forest

The nature area's most popular (if least natural) point of interest, this is a landscaped pond with a footbridge, surrounded by messy greenery including many tree ferns. Well-suited for unambitious walkers, it's accessible from the entrance by a short walk along a wide paved road or a pretty evergreen forest path.

A massive, old-growth Taiwan Red Cypress tree stood here for thousands of years, standing out as the only remaining natural-growing evergreen conifer tree in the area until it fell in 2016. Today there's a boardwalk that allows to you walk around part of enormous fallen log, which is being allowed to return to nature, covered with thousands of smaller forest understory plants.

A wooden canopy walk among the cedar trees.

A house-sized boulder that tumbled down the mountain during the 1999 Jiji Earthquake (921). Now already partially overgrown with plant life. Access via a short but steep paved trail.

Maybe the most photogenic architectural feature in the nature area - a wooden footbridge in a wavy shape with two humps.

For more ambitious visitors, this is the place for expansive views of the surrounding mountains, located atop the mountain ridge bounding the nature area to the east. A 750-meter climb from the nature area entrance via steep stone steps or long switchback roads. (Not something to aim for late in the day unless you're a fast hiker.)

A good strenuous short hike: 1.4 km along a well-maintained trail with a climb of about 200 meters (stone steps), passing through something like the area's natural montane broadleaf forest.

A strenous short hike, climbing 400 m in 1.3 km from where it branches off the Bird Watching Trail to its end near the Observatory, crossing the switchback roads in a couple of places