Perched on high ground, the Songboling area once bristled with batteries of every size built by the ROC Armed Forces for wartime defense; today most of these emplacements have stood idle for years. The township office therefore petitioned the Ministry of National Defense for their transfer, converting the air-raid bunkers into tourist assets that offer visitors a different kind of leisure experience. To defend the vital Zhuoshui River sector, the MND once constructed eleven positions and command posts (27 bunkers plus three buildings) across Songboling; now that their military role has ended, the bunkers scattered among the tea plantations have become a distinctive local landscape. Re-planned and renovated for tourism, they have been transformed into a cluster of unique fortifications.
Songboling’s Shoutian Temple is the district’s most important center of worship and its foremost tourist resource. The temple’s chief deity, Lord Xuantian (the Northern Emperor), is symbolized by the Big Dipper and Polaris, and the seven sites along the planned route are distributed just like those seven stars. To echo the temple and integrate the area’s key asset, the project is named the “Seven-Star Garrison Park.” Each position has been re-designed according to its yin-yang, five-element, zodiac, and color attributes, using plantings, paving, stone groupings, sculpture, and mosaic to refit and repaint the existing works and express each garrison’s individual character.
After planning, the seven bunkers nearest the temple have become a new feature of the tea gardens. Because Lord Xuantian is the northern deity represented by the Big Dipper, the bunkers were laid out as the Seven-Star Garrison to correspond with Shoutian Temple. Drawing on the concepts of the “Five Elements” and the “Seven Stars,” the seven bunkers were painted white, green, yellow, black, red, grey, and purple to highlight each site’s identity. They are named Yaoguang, Kaiyang, Yuheng, Tianquan, Tianxuan, Tianji, and Tianshu.
Travel tip: the lanes are narrow, making the area perfect for a cycling tour. Follow the seven differently styled bunkers and experience their history. The first bunker greets you with the bold sign “Seven-Star Garrison Park”; its black-and-white camouflage hides an interior studded with stalactite-like spikes said to lessen shell-shock. Other bunkers share this feature, but each exterior landscape design is unique—one of the highlights of a visit here.