Jiufen, Taiwan

During my recent trip to Taipei, we took a day trip to Jiufen.


Jiufen is an old town, which has now become quite the tourist destination, because it inspired the film Spirited Away.

We got there during the day. We took the train from Taipei to Ruifang (瑞芳) and then took a bus to Jinguashi (金瓜石), which is an old mining town nearby. There's a museum, which we got to go into for free because we're students at a "domestic" university (on the mainland).

The only thing we went into was a restored lodging, which was in Japanese style, because Japan was occupying Taiwan at the time when the mines were still in use. We got a speedy tour in Chinese and didn't really learn that much about it.

We then walked around the area, exploring a WWII memorial and a temple.

We didn't really enjoy this area very much. On a clear day, you would have been able to see the sea from this area, but it was misty and smoggy, so you couldn't really see anything.

We headed to Jiufen and sat in a cafe for a couple of hours chatting. We rested our feet and waited for it to get a little darker, because we knew the market would be most fun at night/dinner time.

When we properly got to exploring, we found endless shops filled with food, souvenirs, calligraphy stuff, jewelry, clothes, etc. We bought a little bit of all of those things over the course of several hours. But mostly I just took pictures of the small, old market roads. Endless pictures of endless windy market roads.

It started to really get good when it started getting dark...

I really enjoyed Jiufen. I definitely would recommend going, but you don't need that much time there. If I had to do it again, I would have just gone straight there in the late afternoon. But I really enjoyed shopping, eating yummy street food, and seeing the beautiful streets of Jiufen.