Taiwan Round-Island by Train - 10. Jiufen

Infamous for its hordes of day-tripping tourists for its photogenicity, historic Jiufen returned to its 1950s charm after dusk with its deserted cobblestone stairways under dim red lanterns. Sadly this was also our final night before reaching Taipei on our round-island tour of Taiwan by public transport.


In case you’re wondering how we managed to capture a strangely serene Jiufen without the usual armies of international visitors, try staying past 19:00 when the majority of tour buses depart and the cheesy souvenir shops gradually close. Only a handful of eateries stay open, but that’s exactly the small town charm.


Now an immensely popular destination for Taipei residents and Mainland Chinese tourists alike, Jiufen lived its storied past as a glitzy gold rush town in the Japanese colonial era and even hosted a concentration camp for British POWs captured in Singapore during WWII.


The fortunes of Jiufen declined for decades when the most prolific gold mine in Taiwanese history finally ran dry, only to be revived as the filming locale for A City of Sadness, now considered one of the greatest Taiwanese films ever made. Fans started to arrive in droves for its nostalgic townscape, and Jiufen was reinvented as one of Northern Taiwan’s greatest tourist draws.


Inaccessible by land until the discovery of gold in late 19th century, Jiufen was planted on a precipitous mountainside overlooking the northern Taiwanese coastline where the precious quarry was shipped back to Japanese mainland in the colonial era. Independent visitors like ourselves now arrive mostly by bus, 20 minutes from our previous homebase of Ruifang.


Steep would describe not only the terrain at Jiufen, but also the most expensive room prices of our entire round-island trip as our spartan room in a private guesthouse cost almost as much as our proper hotel in Taipei. In retrospect we should have stayed an extra night at our spacious and conveniently located apartment at Ruifang, with easy access to Jiufen by frequent buses.


The hilly landscape also affords panoramic views from just about anywhere along the town’s upper sections, encapsulated at a series of viewing platforms. At this hour only the odd restaurants and guesthouses remained illuminated, along with the treacherous switchbacks and hairpin turns leading up to this hill town.


For once we started dinner with a dessert, in fact one of our favorite desserts of the 11-day trip at the renowned Ah Gan Taro Balls (Location Map), one of two exceedingly popular shops in Jiufen specializing in the Taiwanese sweet soup of glutinous rice balls.


Expertly hand-kneaded in front of the clientele for that fresh chewiness, the so-called rice balls are actually cylindrical rather than spherical, and can be infused with the a variety of flavors aside from the classic taro. Hundreds of customers cycle through every day, especially dating couples enjoying the sunset from the panoramic windows.


Our bowl of Taro Balls with Assorted Beans (TWD 45 / CAD$2) was a colourful potpourri of glutinous rice balls infused with purple taro, yellow yam and green cudweed, as well as an assortment of azuki, mung and kidney beans. What I enjoyed most was the subtle flavour of taro and yam in the chewy rice balls, luscious yet not overly sweetened.


For main course we dropped by a conventional fishball maker for the filling blue-collar favorite of meatballs in glass noodles, and were rewarded with not only the most ginormous meatball ever, but an eye-opening diversity of fishballs from the Southern Taiwanese favorite of milkfish to codfish to cuttlefish and sailfish.

Dinner for Two Persons

Taro Balls with Assorted Beans	TWD 45
Assorted Meatballs with Glass Noodles	TWD 85
Super Meatballs with Rice Noodles	TWD 125
Marinated Cucumbers	TWD 50
Bitter Melon Juice	TWD 70
TOTAL	TWD 375 (CAD$16.3)

By the end of dinner the predominantly Mainland Chinese tourist hordes that swamped Jishan Street from end to end had magically disappeared, restoring the cobblestone alleys to a pre-tourism quietude rarely experienced by day-trippers from Taipei. This was our main reason for spending the night in the hill town.


Those who stay behind predictably congregate at the distinctive A-Mei Teahouse, persistently rumoured to be the blueprint for the Aburaya bathhouse in Miyazaki Hayao's Spirited Away. Despite dismissal of the speculation by Miyazaki himself, scores of Japanese Anime fans still gathered in front of the signature red lanterns for selfies on these extremely steep and slippery stairs in the rain.


Facing the teahouse is the meticulously restored Shengping Theatre, Taiwan’s first ever cinema opened during the reign of Japanese Emperor Meiji in Jiufen’s golden age. Abandoned for a quarter century before being reincarnated as a museum, the theatre still occasionally screens classic black-and-white films and hosts music recitals.


A shopkeeper stopped to pamper one of her several free-roaming dogs at the end of a hectic day. Just about every shop on the pedestrianized Jishan Street was closed after 19:30, though some double-functioned as entrances to the owners’ residences attached to the back. Casual tourists may not realize, but Jiufen is still a traditional market town by design.


The night panorama over the Keelung Coast revealed its string of illuminated fishing ports. The rocky coastline would get increasingly rugged until it all culminates at the famous Yehliu Geopark, the symbol of Northern Taiwan and our destination next morning.


While we did take advantage of the quaint nighttime atmosphere, I still would have preferred to stay overnight at Ruifang rather than Jiufen. The next morning we took an early bus to Keelung en route to Yehliu, before finally reaching Taipei in the late afternoon for our final destination of the 11-day trip.

IF YOU GO

Jiufen is an easy day-trip from Taipei via Ruifang Station, 35 minutes from Taipei Station by express trains. Diagonally across Ruifang Station, the frequent Buses 788/825/827/1062 can all reach Jiufen in roughly 20 minutes. Alternatively, some travelers prefer the convenience of taking Bus 1062 outside Zhongxiao Fuxing metro station in Taipei, taking a slow 2 hours to arrive at Jiufen. I personally prefer the quicker train/bus transfer especially with electronic payment (e.g. EasyCard) on hand.

Another trick that we learned was that Ruifang makes a much better homebase than Jiufen if you are planning to explore more of Northeastern Taiwan on a round-island voyage like ourselves. Not only is Ruifang just 20 minutes from Jiufen by bus, it is also the starting point of a historic rail spur for the series of quaint small town in the direction of Pingxi/Shifen.

Taiwan Round-Island by Train - 9. Ruifang to Pingxi

Cheap peasant gourmet -- 10 vendors in all -- was the highlight of a charming rail spur linking working-class Ruifang with a chain of historic small towns in the direction of Pingxi, best known as the sky lantern capital of Taiwan.


On Day 8 of our round Taiwan journey by train, we inched closer and closer back to our starting point of Taipei after circling the Taiwanese east coast from Kenting to Taitung to Hualien, now rejoining the beaten path at the northeastern corner of Taiwan. Searching for a convenient homebase for our excursions to popular Pingxi and Jiufen, we discovered the hidden gem of Ruifang purely by chance.


We would have stayed two nights at this excellent apartment known as Orange House, 5 minutes’ walk from Ruifang Station, if I hadn’t pre-booked a room at Jiufen the next night. Not only is Ruifang a convenient transportation hub between Pingxi and Jiufen, it also boasts some of Greater Taipei’s best traditional cuisine, mostly under one roof.

Restaurant Review: RUIFANG FOOD STREET (Ruifang) (see location map)

Superior to most night markets, Ruifang Food Street is the culmination of generations of street food tradition now gentrified by the local government in the form of an indoor food court. Every tenant brings decades of fan base from its former existence as a street stall, exemplified by this 40-year-old institution known as Fengwei Meat Soup.


A cheap TWD50 (CAD$2.2) buys an outstanding bowl of Rougeng, the Taiwanese blue-collar favorite consisting of a rough skinless sausage of pork and fish paste, served here in a thick broth with julienned bamboo shoots and topped with a dollop of zesty satay paste.


Even more popular among the neighborhood kids are Hokkienese Pepper Biscuits from Lin’s, hand-kneaded in house and generously stuffed with a filling meat patty before being roasted in the custom-built cylindrical oven, for TWD 45 (CAD$2) a piece.


A release of scalding steam rises as you bite open the flakey pastry shell, revealing the plump pork patty floating in its own juices, flavored with green scallions and a combination of black and white peppercorns. This entire batch of biscuits were gone within 30 minutes after emerging from the oven.


Another decades-old establishment, Kate (pronounced Kar-Ter) is one of two legendary beef noodle specialists in Ruifang along with its archrival Fu Ge, just two blocks north on Minsheng Street. According to local gossip the two noodle masters parted ways a generation ago, each perfecting its own soup base from countless hours of slow extraction from beef bones.


Barely half full from the meat soup and pepper biscuit, we started with a cold dish of sliced beef shanks, chewy tendons and honeycomb tripes, all seasoned generously with thick Taiwanese soy paste.


Our staple for the evening was this signature bowl of Beef Noodles with Half Meat and Half Tendons, not the cheapest at TWD 180 (CAD$7.8) but chock full of tenderly braised beef shanks and gelatin-rich sinews. Along with a dish of blanched yam leaves, one large bowl was filling enough for the two of us.

Dinner for Two Persons

Meat Soup	TWD 50
Pepper Biscuit	TWD 45
Three Varieties of Beef	TWD 150
Beef Noodles with Half Meat and Half Tendons (Large)	TWD 180
Blanched Yam Leaves	TWD 30
TOTAL	TWD 455 (CAD$19.8)

Some street stalls became gentrified into the above indoor market; others carry on as modest, semi-mobile carts off the side of the road, occupying the same street corner for half a century.


This humble street cart is perhaps the most famous culinary institution in Ruifang, a 50-year-old hawker serving an exquisite local invention known by the fanciful name of Longfengtui, or Dragon-and-Phoenix Leg. It contains no dragon or phoenix meat of course, and it’s not even a leg but a deep-fried crépinette, surprisingly similar in concept yet exotically different from the French version.


It’s the most scrumptious sausage comprised of shark meat paste, minced pork, onions and cabbage, wrapped in pork caul fat and deep-fried to order. At the impossible price of just TWD 12 (CAD$0.5) each, this has to be my top recommendation for any foodie passing through Ruifang en route to Jiufen or Pingxi.

For fellow travelers planning on a visit, Ah Hsia’s stall for Dragon-and-Phoenix Leg is located on Minsheng Street as indicated on this location map. There are several stalls in the same block specializing on the same item, so refer to the above picture on what Ah Hsia’s cart looks like.


For breakfast we picked up a variety of items from Ruifang’s traditional wet market (see location map), including a bowl of rice noodles with pork intestine and squid, along with three Hakka-style glutinous rice cakes with fillings of peanuts or minced pork to fuel our morning. We would leave our heavy luggages at the apartment for the day before hopping on the charming little train bound for Pingxi.

Breakfast and Snack for Two Persons

Dragon-and-Phoenix Leg x 2	TWD 24
Rice Noodles with Pork Intestines	TWD 50
Glutinous Rice Cakes x 3	TWD 50
TOTAL	TWD 124 (CAD$5.4)

This is one of the most popular weekend excursions for Taipei residents, a trip to the nostalgic Old Taiwan on wobbly narrow guage trains chuggling along a former coal line originated by the colonial Japanese. In a short 50 minutes the train would call at eight rural towns with varying degrees of oddity, or possibly charm depending on whether you’re a photographer, a history buff or perhaps a cat person.


End of the line is a sleepy town that epitomizes the dramatic rise and fall of the rail spur, built during the reign of Japanese Emperor Taisho when the town of Jingtong boasted the largest coal mine in colonial Taiwan. The thousands of miners had long departed after the coal ran out, leaving the town deserted in its current state as a weekend tourist draw.


Japanese diesel trains still run along these tracks on an hourly basis, infrequent enough that we decided to hike to the next station of Pingxi in the light drizzle. Prior to leaving Jingtong we picked up a mediocre grilled sausage at a street side stand, as well as a miniature model of the region’s traditional sky lantern.


Within 20 minutes we arrived at the historic town of Pingxi, renowned internationally for its breathtakingly photogenic sky lantern festival held annually on Day 15 of the First Lunar Month, the traditional Chinese equivalence of Valentine’s Day. Having previously released sky lanterns at its birthplace of Sichuan, we have since learned to steer away from this environmentally unfriendly activity.


The town’s main pedestrian crossroad is well-known as the battleground of several prominent sausages stands, including the pictured Pingxi Street Charcoal Grilled Sausages (see location map) where we picked up one of the best Taiwanese sausages of our trip.


Freshly handmade with the region’s indigenous black-haired pork and marinated with Kaoliang liquor, these sausages were filled and grilled in front of the clientele and topped with the choice of Asian basil, Japanese mayo or other salivating condiments for TWD 35 each. Meanwhile the archrival across the alley just lowered the price of their gargantuan small sausage in big sausage to just TWD 30 in a cutthroat move as we sat down.


A sky lantern with Korean well-wishes being released. Most visitors don’t realize the chilling origin of the lanterns as stern warning signals, announcing the arrival of murderous bandits at this mountainous corner of Qing Dynasty Taiwan more than a century back.


At Pingxi we briefly deviated from the train route and took the half-hourly Bus 795 to Shifen, stopping close to the town’s famous waterfalls and numerous suspension bridges crossing this turbulent stretch of the Keelung River.


At Yangjingdong Waterfalls we turned back towards Shifen, skipping the larger Shifen Waterfalls as the monsoon rain became increasingly treacherous that afternoon. It would be another 15 minutes’ walk before we would arrive at Shifen Station.


On the road to Shifen I thought we came across the brilliance of Yayoi Kusama, her instantly recognizable giant pumpkin speckled with polka dots ... oh wait ... the shape of ancient East Asian coins with a square hole within the dot? We had little time to investigate as we hurried under the relentless rain towards Shifen, in search of more gastronomic delights.


Shifen is home to the 80-year-old pastry shop of Zhou Wan Zhen (see location map), revered for its traditional wedding pastries since the Japanese colonial era. Each cake is expertly handmade by an artisan patissier and demands the premium price of TWD 50, about the same as a filling bowl of rice noodles.


Beneath scrumptious layers of lard pastry is a traditional filling of lotus seeds and minced pork, ground into a melt-in-your-mouth paste and lightly curried for a mild little kick. For domestic Taiwanese visitors this is a taste of their grandmother’s era somehow surviving into the 21st century, largely as part of the local custom for weddings favours.


In front of Shifen Station we joined the longest queue of the day at Liuge Stuffed Barbecued Wings (see location map), immensely popular with the multi-national legions of Korean- and Japanese-speaking visitors curious for this modern twist of a traditional and labour intensive recipe.


Our previous encounter with stuffed wings was at a tiny izakaya in Tokyo in the form of Teba Gyoza, a deep-fried chicken wing filled with gyoza meat. Here the product takes on the Southern Chinese influence of stuffing chicken wings with rice -- not the traditional glutinous rice but standard Taiwanese fried rice -- and patiently grilled to perfection on charcoal slats.


For curious foodies desiring a bolder and more exotic stuffing than fried rice, the other option is a classic night market flavour of Stinky Tofu and Kimchi, finely diced and crammed into the cavity of one deboned wing. Both flavours turned out delicious, though I personally preferred the pictured fried rice stuffing.

Lunch for Two Persons

Grilled Sausage at Jingtong	TWD 35
Grilled Sausage with Basil at Pingxi	TWD 35
Pastry Cake with Curried Meat at Shifen	TWD 50
Stuffed Barbecued Wings x 2 at Shifen	TWD 130
TOTAL	TWD 250 (CAD$10.9)

The wobbly diesel train returned us to Ruifang one final time to pick up our heavy suitcases from the rental apartment. In this terrible weather we definitely would have appreciated an extra night in Ruifang rather than hauling our luggage onto the bus for our overnight stop of Jiufen, merely 20 minutes away. This would be my best advice for faithful readers reading this far.

IF YOU GO

The Pingxi Line is one of the most popular day-trips from Taipei, the start terminus of Ruifang being a quick 30 minutes away on express trains. Most travelers transfer at Ruifang with the option of picking up an unlimited day pass for the spur line between Ruifang and Jingtong, for a cheap TWD 60 (CAD$2.6) at the time of writing. Once again, for those who prefer a slower few days of exploring Pingxi, Jiufen and Northeastern Taiwan in general, the authentic blue-collar town of Ruifang makes a great homebase with convenient transport and mouth-watering cheap eats.

Taiwan Round-Island by Train - 8. Taroko National Park

One of Asia’s most dramatic canyons was our ultimate destination on Taiwan’s rugged east coast, supremely photogenic yet easily accessible even for novice hikers like ourselves on Day 7 of our round-island journey by train.


Featuring the deepest marble canyon in the world carved through by raging white waters, Taroko is widely acclaimed as the most scenic corner -- as well as one of the most dangerous tourist destinations -- on the island of Taiwan. The geology is extremely unstable: recurrent landslides strike especially in monsoon season, and deadly rock falls are common with Taiwan’s frequent earthquakes, one of which (magnitude 5.5 at Chiayi) occurred 8 hours after our trek through a hard-hat-recommended tunnel.


This would be a bonafide UNESCO World Heritage Site if Taiwan were a member of the United Nations, except for the decades-long political standoff between Beijing and Taipei that has kept this natural wonder from becoming a household name outside of the island. You won’t read this in tourism brochures, but I highly recommend visiting while the pro-independence DPP is in power as the national park gets easily overwhelmed by Mainland Chinese tourists whenever diplomatic relations with Beijing warms up.


Spectacular sceneries abound from white marble rock faces polished by crystal blue streams to snow-covered peaks soaring nearly 4000m straight from sea level. Established as Tsugitaka-Taroko National Park by the colonial Japanese before WWII, Taiwan’s first ever national park actually boasts a summit taller than Mount Fuji.


Public transport to the national park was simple enough. We stayed at the local transportation hub of Hualien the previous night, bought our day pass for the Taroko Line Bus from 7-Eleven, hopped on Bus 1133A in front of Hualien Station in the morning and reached Taroko within 45 minutes.


Our first stop was the national park’s most popular trail, scenic yet evidently gentle enough for these elementary school children on their annual field trip. The only caveat about the Shakadang Trail was the lack of washrooms for a few kilometres, and that the only refreshments available came in the form of bottled water and grilled sausages from the local aboriginal tribe.


The trail head starts from the bottom of the unmistakable red bridge where the untamed Shakadang Stream merges with the larger Liwu River, a kilometre upstream from the Tourist Info Centre. Instead of completing the full 8.2 km round-trip to Three Huts, we decided to turn back halfway at Five Huts to strategically catch the hourly bus to our next stop of Buluowan.


This pristine utopia is the ancestral homeland of a toughened and once-feared tribe of aboriginals, known as the Truku and bastardized as Taroko by the invading Japanese in the 1910s. No longer known for their impressive facial tattoos and head-hunting rituals, the modern day tribesmen subsist on agriculture and supplement their income by offering refreshments to visiting tourists.


Signages of Indigenous Reserve Land mark the territory of a people once powerful enough to take on the Imperial Japanese Army, 2,000 tribesmen against the impossible odds of 20,000 soldiers armed with machine guns and artillery in the bloodiest conflict between aboriginals and Japanese colonists during the so-called Taroko Wars.


After subduing the Truku, the Japanese conceptualized a hydroelectric dam upstream along the Shakadang and proceeded to dynamite this path out of sheer rock cliffs as an intended service road. Well the Japanese lost WWII and retreated from Taiwan, the dam never materialized and the service road became Shakadang Trail in the expanded national park.


Within 40 minutes we reached the crystalline waters of Five Huts where the Truku tribesmen just started kindling their charcoal grill for some homemade wild boar sausages, available around noon for a reasonable TWD40 (CAD$1.7). Luckily we already picked up some sandwiches and tea-flavored eggs from Hualien, not wasting any time in returning to the trail head to catch the next bus to Buluowan.

But the National Park’s website lied.


Our original plan of picking up a recommended hard hat en route to Swallow Grotto was thwarted by 1) the fact that hard hats were no longer offered at Buluowan and 2) the closure of the footpath from Buluowan to Swallow Grotto due to recent landslides. Our blessing in disguise was the pictured panorama over the Liwu River valley taken from the Meander Cove Trail, a worthwhile diversion while we awaited the next hourly bus to Swallow Grotto.


The problem with Swallow Grotto was that the official bus stop was located at the eastern end of the grotto near the Zhuilu Suspension Bridge, requiring visitors to double-back along the stunning yet perilous cavern where fist- (and occasionally coconut-) sized rocks routinely drop from above with potentially fatal consequences. With safety in mind our friendly bus driver advised everyone -- mainly in Chinese but partially in broken English -- to remain on the bus at the official stop and dropped off at the far end of the grotto, at his own unofficial stop coined Yanzikou Middle in English.


Here we witnessed one of the narrowest sections of the Taroko Gorge, barely a few metres wide at places and several hundred metres deep. Seasonal waterfalls emerged magically out of vertical marble cliffs inhabited by swooping swallows, in landscapes right out of Chinese ink paintings.


Our pedestrian path was originally part of the Central Cross-Island Highway, ordered by Chiang Kai-shek in the 1950s to connect Hualien with Taichung on the west coast at the cost of 200+ lives. The grotto itself was tunneled out of the area’s highly unstable rocks, and entire slabs still sporadically come down to smother the unfortunate hiker, or an entire car in the case of the new vehicular road adjacent.


Which brings us to the fact that we still had no hard hat, certainly nerve-racking considering that rock falls at the nearby Tunnel of Nine Turns had become so epidemic that the trail was closed during our visit. Nobody got hurt that afternoon, and the next significant earthquake in the area would strike at 22:20 that evening.


At last we reached the official bus stop at Zhuilu Suspension Bridge, the dramatic entrance to an ancient footpath used by the aboriginals since time immemorial and now hailed by Taiwanese hikers as the nation’s most breathtaking and treacherous hike, accessible only with a permit from the national park office.


Our only regret on this day was that the Cave of Water Curtain, considered by the locals as the crown jewel of the national park, remained closed due to severe earthquake damages several years back. From the suspension bridge we returned to Hualien for a late lunch of noodles and some hard-to-find edible souvenirs, before continuing our counter-clockwise circuit of Taiwan.

IF YOU GO

Taroko National Park is easily accessible by the convenient Taroko Line tourist shuttle, also known as Bus 1133A connecting the national park with Hualien Station as well as the closer but smaller Xincheng Station. Day passes for the tourist shuttle can be purchased from the Hualien Bus kiosk next to Hualien Station or from any convenient store. Hualien Station is 2 hours from Taipei by express trains. If you're on a round-island trip like us, heavy luggages can be stored at the luggage room at Hualien Station.