Keelung in Taiwan was another one of those ports we’d visited once before on our previous cruise aboard Diamond Princess (see: Keelung, Taiwan). On that occasion I’d woken up early to head down to the promenade deck in search of shelter from the rain for the sail into the port while my wife had remained comatose in bed in our inside cabin. With a balcony to call our own on this trip we’d be quite capable of seeing the event from the comfort of our own space but as it turned out we completely missed the thing as arrival was earlier than we were prepared to wake for. And so it was that our first views in the morning of Taiwan’s port on its northern coast were after the cruise ship had docked.
It was interesting to see just how much of the port hadn’t appeared to have changed at all in the intervening decade. This was quite a contrast with our previous port, Hong Kong, where we’d seen differences in the skyline almost immediately. The buildings we saw, the temple and statue on the hillside, and even the yellow taxis in the street were all instantly familiar. The only thing that was different was the weather. Gone was the rain that we’d been drenched by previously. Instead, we had a light layer of cloud and the imminent promise of that disappearing with a noticeably rising heat and almost-tangible humidity in the air.
We’d not just booked an excursion for our day in Taiwan, we’d booked as close to the same excursion as the last time we’d visited. With the omission of a stop along the coastline we would be repeating our 2008 trip to Jiufen, the reason being that we’d enjoyed it so much on the first occasion and we just didn’t feel the lure of a drive down to Taipei strong enough.
We boarded our bus at the appropriate time for the cruise excursion and set off on a winding course through Keelung, around the coastline, then up into the hills where the former mining village was situated, a journey of around half an hour. Our guide was Olivia and she provided a running commentary of the history of Jiufen and what we could expect to see on the way there with the promise of information pertaining more to Keelung and Taiwan in general on the way back.
Jiufen, as we already knew, was once a mining town built on the hillside. Its roads are for pedestrians only and are narrow, winding, and lined with shops these days. It is the assumed (though denied) inspiration for the excellent animated film Spirited Away. The roads are connected by long sets of steep steps and traffic passes around the town on similarly steep, winding roads with a number of car parking areas surrounding the main tourist attraction. Our bus parked north of Jiufen in a dedicated parking area for tourist buses which presented us with decent views over the land north of us and down towards the coastline as well as a sight of Jiufen itself climbing higher into the hillside to our south.
We gathered in the bus parking area long enough for several of the passengers we were travelling with to use the toilets there. From the parking area there was an almost straight-up route climbing steps into the heart of Jiufen and we were free to head that way on our own if we’d wanted to, having been given the time that we needed to meet back. However, if we had done that then we would have had to pay for our own trip to the tea house that would otherwise be included as part of the excursion, and with drinking tea in a tea house in Taiwan being one of the highlights of this trip we elected to stay with Olivia.
Rather than heading directly into the town we took a more circuitous route clockwise in order to make for the Fushan Temple, a place we remembered well. While the walk was uphill the going wasn’t too strenuous but with much of this trek requiring us to walk single file along the main road and wait for stragglers this took around fifteen minutes which did at least provide plenty of opportunity to fire off random shots along the way.
The increasing ambient temperature and prolonged exertion of ascending to the temple made our arrival there quite a relief and we hunted for shade as we first waited for everyone else to gather and then to listen to our guide talk about the holy place. The temple is Taoist and still in use and was dedicated to the Earth God, one of the least important gods in the religion but one to which the miners who used to live and work in the area had a lot of faith and used to pray to regularly in order to deliver new discoveries in the hills.
Inside the temple everything was as gloriously, gorgeously garish as we remembered. If you like the colour pink and your taste in worship is as far away from the Lutheran ideal as it’s possible to get then this is the temple for you. There was barely a flat surface in the building’s interior with decorations everywhere you looked. Although it would have been nice to take a closer look at some of the carvings there were people in the temple lighting incense and praying and we quietly and quickly took just a few photos before stepping back out into the sunshine.
In the next post from our day in Taiwan I’ll cover the narrow, curving alleys and the bustling life inside Jiufen itself.