{"id":28308,"date":"2018-12-14T23:51:32","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T15:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=28308"},"modified":"2026-03-15T20:30:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T12:30:03","slug":"12-days-in-taiwan-day-08-jiufen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2018\/12\/14\/12-days-in-taiwan-day-08-jiufen\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Days in Taiwan \u2013 Day 08 \u2013 Jiufen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jiufen<\/strong> is that must-visit small mountain town that looks to the East China Sea, and has its roots during the gold-rush era of the 1890s. The name of the town in Chinese \u2014 \u4e5d\u4efd \u2014 apparently comes from its origins before the 1890s, when just nine (‘\u4e5d’) families resided in the small village and food and provisions brought up to them had to be divided into nine portions (‘\u4efd’). The gold rush brought about the usual hordes of wealth-seekers and turned the village into a bustling town, then it went into relative decline again until 1989 when the Taiwanese film A City of Sadness<\/a> brought it solidly into the national limelight when it was used as the film’s shooting location. Today though, Jiufen is best known internationally for its A-Mei Teahouse for its resemblance to location scenes in the famous Japanese anime film Spirited Away<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s actually a short 5km drive uphill to Jiufen Old Town from the Golden Waterfall<\/a> we stopped at earlier. But the road in is quite narrow with a couple of extremely sharp turns uphill. And as we approached the town, traffic slowed to a terrific crawl as cars had to jostle for space with the large tour buses, not to mention visitors on both sides trying to get from point to point in the small town with umbrellas in the rain and all trying not to get run over by vehicles at the same time. Our minsu is literally just steps away from the Old Street and only accessible by vehicles via a very narrow one-way street. More than a few cars were trying to come out the other way instead. Just chaos:<\/p>\n

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The little road on the left leading slightly upslope is Qingbian Road, and where our minsu is.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our minsu itself is also quite tucked in from this side road and only accessible by foot via a few flights of very steep steps. No wonder previous guests staying in the property have all remarked that trying to get to the home is really tough with large luggage cases! We had just one<\/strong><\/em> medium-sized one and it largely contained the things that two kids need \u2014 i.e. their clothes, their warm clothing, their toiletries, their soft toys, their medicine and first-aid kits for all manner of emergencies \u2014 and even just that proved to be a struggle with rain thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n

The messing around with turtle-speed traffic and the steep climb was worth it though. The minsu is a stone-built house, beautifully decorated, homely and is literally just about a 30-second walk away from the Old Street, and about a 2-minute walk from A-Mei Teahouse. One thing we’ve got to say about this trip at this point: the homestays we’re staying in keep getting better and better!<\/p>\n

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Spacious, and seasonally decorated too!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Right after I took this picture, the two started bickering over who could sit on the swing chair more, and only stopped after Ling threatened to ban them both from getting on it again.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is exactly the kind of home we’d be happy to vegetate in on a rainy day and absolutely not go out. But we deliberately chose an overnight stay in Jiufen really to visit the Old Street when the afternoon crowds were dissipating, and for me to take evening and night shots of the area. I’ll cover that in the next post.<\/p>\n

For the moment though, we thought the crowds would be thinning out from 4PM onwards, so we’ll brave the rain and step out to explore. Boy \u2014 were we mistaken. The place was still choked with visitors at 4:15PM. And as though people congestion was not making things bad enough, many were carrying umbrellas rather than wearing ponchos, which meant that we had to be alert not to get our eyes poked out by other visitors’ umbrella rib tips. And many shopkeepers were annoyed even as the raindrops were sliding off the umbrellas onto their wares, as the walkways of the Old Street are very narrow in some parts. No wonder our homeowner strongly advised when briefing us at check-in not to use umbrellas if possible.<\/p>\n

There were also a lot of people stopping to take pictures of themselves posing against the A-Mei Teahouse and obstructing everyone else behind them \u2014 many of whom I’m sure were probably also waiting for their turn to similarly pose for their Instagrams \u2014 in the narrow walkways, trying not to slip down the steep stone steps, all in the rain. It got so bad that we decided to just duck into a restaurant right beside A-Mei Teahouse for an early dinner, then retire back to the much more comfy minsu to chill and wait it out. After all, the person who’s really interested in this Teahouse is this photography nut, not the kids or the wife \u2014 so why should they suffer for my indulgences haha.<\/p>\n

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People Mountain..<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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… People Sea.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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For our ang mo bud, People (\u4eba) Mountain (\u5c71) People (\u4eba) Sea (\u6d77) is a literal word-for-word translation of a Chinese idiom ‘\u4eba\u5c71\u4eba\u6d77’ \u2014 which means huge crowds of people!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Our minsu is literally just behind Jiufen Old Street!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next post on my attempts for a night photography shoot of the Old Street and A-Mei Teahouse<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jiufen is that must-visit small mountain town that looks to the East China Sea, and has its roots during the gold-rush era of the 1890s. The name of the town in Chinese \u2014 \u4e5d\u4efd \u2014 apparently comes from its origins<\/p>\n

Read More 12 Days in Taiwan \u2013 Day 08 \u2013 Jiufen<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[608,613,618],"class_list":["post-28308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-sony-a7-iii","tag-sony-fe-24-105mm-f4-0","tag-taiwan-2018","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/blog-2018-taiwan-day-08-A7_02239-Jiufen-Airbnb.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38559,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28308\/revisions\/38559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}