Up to Jiufen & down to Tainan
I balked. In a pitch a little too high to be manly I felt the need to reconfirm. “Twenty-five quid for a cup of tea?” “Yes, but you get to keep what you don’t drink in a little pouch to take away and have later”. Oh, well that’s OK then…
“It’s not just a cup of tea”, Helen kindly reminded me, “you’re buying an experience.” We were sat on a bench in the Jiufen Teahouse where a tea cognoscente was flicking through his brochure of brews. “This one is particularly special,” he enthused, “it’s from the very tips of the leaf from a mountain in Elysium, plucked by naked nymphs in the moonlight”, or some other such rubbish. This one was 1,600 Taiwanese Dollars (about £38.30).
We settled on a cheaper Green Oolong that was about £22, still much to my chagrin. The tea-man also found it hard to hide his disappointment. At least Helen was happy. This was the tea drinking afternoon she’d thought we’d be getting at the plantations on Maokong at the top of the cable car ride, when all we found were normal cafes. To be fair, once we’d settled in, been taught how to brew the tea based on exact quantities of water and down-to-the-second timing, we actually found the experience pretty enjoyable and stretched it out for almost two hours. The tea in the ceremony was little balls of Shanlinxi Oolong that needed 50 seconds worth of soaking in boiling water, followed by a swift transfer to a pouring cup that was then used to fill tiny drinking vessels. Next soak was to last 5 seconds, after that 10 seconds, then going up in 5 second intervals thereafter. We got 10 brews from our sample and sent the rest home. It was strange – the more we sat there and drank, the more we appreciated the act of the ceremony. Water at a constant 80 degrees from a beautiful black kettle on a charcoal platform sunk into the table, uniformed replenishers who came round to top-up your supply from an enormous pot, the discipline of the performance itself, the accompanying Oolong flavoured cheesecake and the lovely views over the town to the sea beyond. It all became rather intoxicating and relaxing. We began to wonder if it might not have been marijuana in our brew-pot.
Tea ceremony kit & cake, Jiufen
It was much needed too. We’d had a bit of a traumatic journey getting to Jiufen from Taipei, largely down to my insistence that we should opt for cheaper transport options rather than just jumping into taxis because it was easier. Sometimes it’s right to be a tight-arse about things and sometimes it just isn’t. This was one of the latter occasions….
Jiufen back-street
It started out alright – metro to Taipei Main Station and then local train to Ruifeng, a town a few miles away from Jiufen. From here it’s easy to get a taxi, but I had my mind set on getting one of the many buses to save cash. We saw a few around – all city buses with room to manoeuvre as most don’t have many seats. We saw ours and pegged it to the stop. We were last on and the bus set off. Only then did we realise it was an all-seater, totally packed, with a very narrow aisle and nowhere to put our bags (no storage underneath the bus either). I tried getting Helen’s rucksack into the aisle space. Helen uses a boot-bag strapped on to the front and it makes the whole thing wider. It got stuck. Try as I might, I could not get the buggering thing to move. I tried to take the boot bag off, but couldn’t reach the strap clips. Meanwhile the bus driver was going bananas as my own rucksack and Helen were standing at the door entrance and he was loudly insisting we move. The western tourists in the front seats were just staring at us as we struggled, no doubt in contempt, and offered no help at all. Then out of the blue an elderly Taiwanese gent got up, came over, helped me get the bags detached, then gave up his own seat so I could store all our gear on it. I could have kissed him, but decided against it. He seemed more than happy with my profuse thanks, though less so with my profuse sweating. On arrival it took several goes to get all the bags off. We haven’t packed lightly as we’re catering for loads of different conditions on this trip and just sometimes, like now, it’s a bit of a burden.
Jishan Street, Jiufen
Jishan Street, Jiufen
Jishan Street, Jiufen
Jiufen itself is another Taiwanese tourist mecca and its ‘Old Street’ (Jishan) attracts thousands everyday. The street itself is a winding lane that’s covered in part by arcades and large awnings, hosting a multitude of souvenir shops, food vendors and small cafes. However, despite the multitudes, it’s a wonderfully atmospheric place, lined along its length with paper lanterns whose red glow in the gloom of a drab day were most heartening. As with most attractions here, nobody ever seems to leave the main drag, though away from it peace was easily found. This was most true of the several Chinese temples that dot the town. They never seem to be mentioned in guides, but have phenomenal sculptures, crazy-colour interiors and, most usually here, no-one about. At one we found a pseudo Punch & Judy show going on. It was odd, as the performance was being shown with absolutely no-one watching, until we turned up. We couldn’t make head nor tail of it though – it all revolved around a mysterious moustachioed character who weaved his way in and out of the ‘stage’ and met other beings, had a conversation in Chinese, then left. Not a naughty dog, a string of sausages or any wife-beating in sight. Someone needs to have a word…..
Chinese temple, Jiufen
Jishan Street crowds, Jiufen
It was pretty miserable weather-wise and it put paid to our plans here. We had intended to hike the superbly named ‘Tea-Pot Trail’, a walk up another mountain topped with an array of rocks that resemble a tea-pot (fancy that). Once you reach the rocks, there are a series of ropes with which to pull yourself up inside the peak and emerge at the top through a tiny hole to survey your surroundings. It’s apparently a little dangerous at the best of times, but on the day we intended to go it was raining torrentially for hours. Helen was feeling no better either, so we (me) reluctantly abandoned it.
Chinese temple, Jiufen
Jishan Steet, Jiufen
Jishan Street, Jiufen
Mr Punch gets a Tawainese make-over
Despite the conditions and health issues we enjoyed Jiufen and ended up seeing much more of it than we might have done otherwise. On leaving, we decided to get a taxi back to the station. It wasn’t that expensive either, which made me feel worse. Then another local train and back to Taipei for the High Speed Railway journey to Tainan. Though Tainan is at the other end of the island it took a mere hour and a half to reach it, but like a lot of other speedy transport solutions round these parts, it was way outside of the city. You might save loads of time on the HSR, but you then have to bugger around getting slow local trains or buses into the city itself, another 40 minutes away.
Confucious Academy, Tainan
Koxinga’s shrine, Tainan
Tainan
Confucious Academy, Tainan
Tainan, the oldest city on the island, with a rich Dutch heritage (they built up the place as a trading centre in the 17th century) is a very different proposition from Taipei. Less crowded, more relaxed, a little more scruffy, it’s a decidedly more pleasant proposition. There are some lively little alleyways and snickets dotted all over town where you can find hidden temples or little cafes and restaurants. Some streets have little themes going on, like the one dedicated to snails (!?!) or are strewn with large paper lanterns that provide some wonderfully colourful illumination in the evenings. Academies and temples are the biggest draw and we spent a fair few hours roaming the streets in search of them. Alas though, we both felt decidedly awful here – Helen with her nasty, nasty flu eventually passed it on to me, so I’m sure we definitely didn’t get the best out of the place as we bemoaned our thick heads, snotty noses and the lack of decent sleep.
Chinese temple, Tainan
Shennong Street, Tainan
Tainan
Shennong Street, Tainan
Ending on a physical downer was never going to help raise Taiwan much further up our desirable destination list unfortunately, and we’re leaving here much more in anticipation of seeing Vietnam rather than wishing we’d had more time. There is much to be seen here and we did have some lovely moments to be sure, but we’ve been very recently spoiled by a simply wonderful couple of months in South Korea and Japan, so it was never really going to weigh up that favourably against them. Being the overall busiest place on the trip so far (Shanghai in holiday mode excepted) didn’t help either. Nor did feeling like death warmed-up half the time.
Jinhua temple, Shennong Street, Tainan
It’s one of the pitfalls of constant travel – destinations that might otherwise have seemed refreshing or revelatory can sometimes get demoted in the inevitable compulsion to compare and contrast. Unfortunately for it, Taiwan will be playing in the Conference League next season…..
Footnote: A striking aspect of life in the city of Tainan is the sound of military jets zooming overhead in the morning. There’s an airforce base nearby and pilots use the first few hours of daylight to perform training missions in the south of the country. From 7am to about midday, you can see and hear 2 or 3 jets every half hour booming through the sky directly above you. No need for an alarm clock here. A reminder, of course, of the constant threat this island faces from its rapacious neighbour China, who still insists the territory is to be retaken at some point in the near future, whether by force or otherwise. The Taiwanese seem pretty relaxed about it (a little like the Seoulites just 30 miles away from the North Korean menace), but it’s a sobering thought nonetheless.
Footnote; On our wanderings around the Confucian Academy in Tainan, we discovered that the great sage shares his birthday, the 28th September, with Helen. This prompted said wife to proclaim that was why she’s turned out so wise, sober and ingenious herself. She then stuck her head in front of the camera as I was taking a picture and yawned at me in a stupid and exaggerated manner (see below). I’ll let you decide whether she’s right or not…..
Simon (7th December 2025)
Hiya both, looks amazing and the 📸 are amazing. xx
Thanks Sham. It looks especially good at night…
Glad you enjoyed the tea . Hope you are both recovered and on to better things. You have been spoiled by the fabulous sights of Japan.