Moving on to a different location. Finished up the day at Jiufen. This used to be a very old style mountainside village. Even after the rest of Taiwan became more and more modern, jiufen stayed behind. That is until the late 80's and early 90's when many movies were filmed here, as they needed a setting which looked like historical town. Since then it has been very popular with tourist and the quaint old buildings, restaurants and storefronts, were replaced by new ones which are styled to look old and quaint.
It has now become a tourist trap, with it's small alleys filled with souvenir shops and by my count fifteen of the same tea shop restaurants. One of the movies which was set here (City of Sadness) had quite a few scenes take place in a very old and traditional style restaurant. The story is after that, a lot of real estate was bought up on that street and everybody opened up a restaurant that looks exactly like that and said that the movie's restaurant was either filmed there or inspired by that restaurant. With a few going so far as to have the restaurant's name be "City of Sadness restaurant" which logically seems to mean that the restaurant opened only after the movie, but I'm not a tourism expert. Anecdotally, not only did they all look alike, but a few of them had pictures of the movie out front to show that it was the restaurant from the movie.
That's not the only movie to make Jiufen a hot spot. It is rumored that Jiufen was the inspiration for some scenes from the wildly successful Japanese animated film "Spirited Away." I have heard this from many Taiwanese sources, but in my own research never found the filmmakers to mention this. Regardless, Jiufen is full of Japanese tourists. If you have a good eye, you may spot some in this picture.
Despite being a tourist trap, Jiufen remains full of tourist not just from Taiwan, but from all over the world. i don't think i've been anywhere else in taiwan where i've seen so many countries represented. This all came together in a very sweet moment, when a lady asked a gentleman to take her picture. After the picture they got to talking and she said she was from Japan and he said he was from Hong Kong, and they started talking about their respective trips in Taiwan. It was very warming to see, and reminds me that sometimes tourist traps are nice places to visit because they are one place where everybody is almost guaranteed to be kind to each other. Here in Taipei, it is often considered rude to speak to strangers, and most people go about their day not even acknowledging the existence of others.
Finally, the trip to Jiufen showed me that I really do need to use a real camera, or at least update my phone from one that isn't four years old and dying. Jiufen has an iconic small alley that consists of a set up steps running down the side of the mountain, and tea shops all along it. I took quite a few of shots, but none came out well. I also took a picture of some of the restaurants that while "fake" are still quite attractive. But nothing came out even well enough to see what was going on. So I apologize for this long post, because it basically is three days worth of stories, that i had to put into one since I only have the one good picture.
