The name Xitou translates roughly as 'the origin of the river' — a name that describes what you feel when you arrive at a valley enclosed by mountains on three sides. The forest sits in Lugu Township in Nantou County, the mountainous interior of Taiwan, at an average altitude of 1,150 meters above sea level. The highest point within the reserve is Mount Lingtou at 2,025 meters. Rain is abundant here: the average annual rainfall is 2,635 millimeters, and the cool, moist microclimate it produces is part of what shaped a forest so dense and diverse. Temperatures are mild through the year — monthly averages range from 11 to 28 degrees Celsius — making Xitou a popular escape for lowland Taiwanese, especially in the hot summer months.

During the Japanese colonial period, the forest served as an experimental station for University of Tokyo students — a place to study tropical and subtropical forestry in a setting that offered both scientific variety and logistical access. After the handover of Taiwan to the Republic of China in 1945, the forest's management passed to National Taiwan University, which continues to administer it today as part of its experimental forest system. In 1970, the reserve received its current name and formal status as a nature education area. The continuity of academic stewardship — from Tokyo to Taipei, across the discontinuity of colonial transition — has meant unusually consistent management over more than a century.

The 2,500 hectares of Xitou hold an extraordinary range of species. Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) forms the most visually distinctive groves — tall, close-planted, filtering the light into shifting columns of green and gold. Cryptomeria and Taiwania rise among conifers planted and self-seeded across the slopes. A Ginkgo biloba garden offers a different visual register, its fan-shaped leaves turning brilliant yellow in autumn. More than 70 species of bird have been recorded in the reserve, and the forest's layers — from bamboo understory to tall-canopy cedar — create the conditions for that density of life. The overall effect, especially in mist, is of a forest that seems to extend indefinitely in all directions.

The most striking of Xitou's constructed features is its canopy skywalk: 180 meters long and 22.6 meters high, the walkway suspends visitors above the treetops at a height that makes the scale of the forest suddenly legible. Looking out from that elevation, the bamboo and cedar stretch away toward the surrounding peaks, and the sky overhead — often partly cloud — seems more immediate. An observatory sits at an elevation above 2,000 meters, and the forest's trail network extends through different habitat zones. Electric car rentals, a visitor center, restaurants, and hotel accommodation make Xitou accessible for longer stays, though the forest's character rewards those who walk its quieter trails in the early morning, when the mist is still sitting in the valley and the birds are loudest.