With our walk up and around the outskirts of Jiufen to take a look at the Fushan Temple completed we were led by our guide directly into the heart of the former mining town nestled in the hills of Taiwan. This was through narrow streets shared by pedestrians and cyclists (pedal-powered and motorised) and was thankfully mostly level with occasional lovely views northwards towards the coastline.
It wasn’t just the views out to sea that distracted us on this short walk, though, as we kept brushing past orb spiders. They appeared to be the same or very similar type that we’d previously seen in the Sengan-en Gardens in Kagoshima.
Spiders weren’t the only example of wildlife we spotted with cats appearing too both in living animal and street art form.
The first part of our time exploring Jiufen would be a guided tour of a few of the historical landmarks. First stop would be the Shengping Theatre in the centre of the town and the closest thing to a public square in Jiufen, a slightly wider than average, slightly more open confluence of narrow lanes surrounded on all sides by shops and tea houses. When we’d visited Jiufen previously that theatre had been standing but closed, the result of damage from a typhoon in 1986. Since 2011, though, the theatre has returned to working service. It was originally built in the second decade of the twentieth century for the miners and their families but had undergone several rebuilds in the intervening century. We were pleased to recognise the poster above the theatre entrance, having taken a photo of a nearly identical image on our 2008 trip to Jiufen.
The excursion did not include a visit to the theatre itself but it did include a visit to one of the tea houses beside it. We had very fond memories from visiting one of these establishments ten years earlier where Americans in our group had asked for coffee but this time around everyone seemed happy to try the local drink and accompanying charcoal peanuts (and they were lovely!)
From the tea house we next carried on in the approximate direction we’d been taking to reach this part of the town in the first place. This took us out of the bustling centre of Jiufen and onto wider roads and across a bridge to a memorial space set up for the miners which included one of the entrances to the network of tunnels within the hills on which we stood.
We retraced our route a little bit before then climbing up a long, steep set of steps. This took us past a large wall-mounted memorial to the gold miners of Jiufen and provided some sweeping views out across the hillside again.
At this point our guide Olivia made sure that everyone knew how to get back to the bus and what time we would need to be there for and then offered to show anyone who wanted to know where the best places to buy tea were. As much as we’d enjoyed the tea we couldn’t see ourselves making it when we were back home and didn’t think we knew anyone who would appreciate it as a gift so this was the moment we headed off on our own.
We love the look and feel of Jiufen‘s store-lined roads and steps. It is often said that the town is the inspiration for Miyazaki‘s fantastic animated movie Spirited Away and the town’s surge in tourism really kicked off when Japanese tourism guides proclaimed that as fact but the artist himself has denied it. Regardless, it is a stunningly atmospheric place to explore with sounds and smells and the constant motion of people walking past completely enveloping you. Shops in Jiufen range from the sorts of places that wouldn’t look out of place in a modern mall – clean, bright, minimalist – right through to cluttered stalls piled high with mass-produced, cheap produce for tourists, and if you’re keen to buy different food products then you are well looked-after with many vendors offering free tastings too.
Jiufen’s steep, winding roads are lined with tall buildings and the shops typically have awnings out keeping everything shaded and sheltered from the weather conditions, whether that’s the rain we had before or the sunshine of this trip. That obstruction of the outside world, though, combined with the twists and turns of the paths and the huge array of shops along them comes at the small cost of increasing your chances of losing your sense of direction at times. We’d been handed a tourist map of Jiufen on the bus which was almost as useless as trying to use the phone to work out which way was which; only the general sense of upness and downness prevailed and with some roads doubling back on themselves this was of limited help. Luckily, Jiufen isn’t that big so even getting turned around a couple of times won’t lead to you getting too lost but we did start to pay careful attention to the time to ensure we’d have plenty of it to find the direct route back to the bus when we’d need to leave.
Emerging from one of Jiufen’s narrow lanes onto a main road skirting around the town’s eastern side we found a raised viewing platform that provided some nice views out to the coastline and of the surrounding hills once again. More clouds were filling the sky at this point, an indication of the rising humidity of the area, but there didn’t seem to be any threat of actual rain.
Stopping once to render assistance to a couple of American backpackers who’d become lost and who somehow sensed that we knew where we were going and where they might find the tea houses we then made our way back through to the centre of Jiufen on a quest to get rid of the Taiwanese money that was burning a hole in our pockets. We were pleased to discover some backscratchers for sale at one of the shops as this has become a running joke for something to bring back to my dad when we’re travelling.
Still with time to spare we made our way to the western side of Jiufen then as well although the most interesting shops thinned out quite rapidly in that direction. We did get to watch one local playing the guitar in the open doorway to his house just apparently for his own pleasure which was nice.
We were quite high up in Jiufen’s maze of streets so the most direct route back to the bus in the parking lot at the base of the town was down the long, steep steps that more-or-less ran through the centre. These we duly took, passing some more references to the miners who’d once inhabited the place as well the “town square” with the theatre and tea houses again.
We ended up being the last people on the bus (although we were still there before we were due to set off), a good indicator that the excursion provided ample time for people to explore on their own and probably that a lot of people were concerned enough about getting lost that they made sure they could get back early. It’s also possible, because of the toilets in the parking area and the difficulty in finding them in Jiufen itself (there are some), that nature scheduled an early return for some of our fellow passengers.
As I’ve said, we love Jiufen and would strongly recommend it if you’re visiting Keelung, Taiwan on a cruise and the sights of a major city – Taipei – doesn’t strike you as that interesting by comparison. It is a place with a welcoming claustrophobia, a fabulous atmosphere, a by-necessity slow pace, and somewhere that the weather doesn’t really affect as it’s staggeringly charming under rain or sunshine. You can buy pretty much any type of thing here but you will need local currency for the vast majority of places.