※Dajhuhu Hiking Trail is currently closed for renovation.
The Dazhuhu Nature Trail is only 200 meters long, making it the shortest trail at Sun Moon Lake. Enter the trail beside the parking lot below the highway, and you will soon come to an observation platform. On the right side of the platform is a trail leading down to the shore of the lake. On the lake below the trail is an area of boiling, rumbling water that is called the Sun Moon Fountain. Actually, this is where water from an underground tunnel empties into the lake. When the Japanese occupied Taiwan, they dug a tunnel all the way from Wujie Village in Renai Township to the lake and used it to divert water from the Jhuoshuei River. This is the main source of water for the lake. The tunnel from Wuje is 15.1 kilometers long, and it comes to the surface of the ground in only one place, in Dongguang Village of Yuchi Township. The rest of the tunnel is buried under the mountains. There is a story that during the Japanese occupation, a man named Liao Tian-ding was being chased by the Japanese. He jumped into the water at Dongguang Village and resurfaced in Sun Moon Lake at Dajhuhu, and escaped. Some old people say that it was not Lao Tan-ding who jumped into the tunnel, but another man named Wang Jiang-han who had been mistaken by the Japanese as a spy. They tortured him. When he couldn't stand it anymore, he lied to them that there was a cache of weapons hidden in a valley. When they passed by the stream of water from the tunnel on the way to the valley, he jumped in and then climbed out of a ventilation shaft beside the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village. He hid away in the mountains around Shuili, and didn't go back to Yuchi until after the Japanese left Taiwan.