Live cameras in Lugu, Taiwan

Lugu is a mountainous rural township in southwestern Nantou County, in the heart of Taiwan, covering about 142 square kilometers of tea slopes, bamboo groves and forest. Fewer than 16,000 people live here, and the number has been falling for years as young people move to the cities. Lugu is famous as the home of Dongding oolong, first grown on Dongding Mountain, and tea farms terrace the hillsides around the town. It is also one of central Taiwan's favorite escapes: the Xitou Nature Education Area, run by National Taiwan University, has cedar forests, a canopy walkway and cool mountain air, and nearby are Shanlinxi, the misty Wangyou Forest, Qilin Lake and the Fenghuanggu Bird and Ecology Park.

Mountain roads around the tea country

Lugu's camera list comes from Taiwan's public road monitoring feeds, opened to the public by the national transport ministry. Lugu itself is reached mainly by county roads: Road 151 climbs from Zhushan through Lugu to Xitou, and Road 139 links the northern villages toward Shuili. Our map gives each camera to its nearest named place, and in this thinly populated area that means Lugu collects views from highways in the surrounding hills and valleys of southern Nantou, not only roads in the township itself. The pictures are still frames refreshed every few minutes, useful for seeing fog, rain or traffic on the way into the mountains.

Like every township on the island, Lugu sits eight hours ahead of UTC and never changes its clocks. At higher elevations it is noticeably cooler than the plains, which is why people from Taichung and Tainan drive up on hot summer weekends. Afternoon fog rolls into the forests most days, and heavy typhoon rains between July and October can cause landslides on mountain roads. Mornings are usually the clearest time to look. Spring and winter are the main tea-picking seasons, when farms and tea shops are busiest. Days in June run from about five in the morning to a quarter to seven at night; in December sunset comes around a quarter past five.

Zhushan, known for bamboo crafts, lies just west, and the Jiji Weir on the Zhuoshui River marks the northern edge of the township.

Sources: Lugu, Nantou - Wikipedia · 鹿谷鄉 - Wikipedia (Chinese).