Jiufen

Jiufen (九份) is a former gold-mining settlement stacked up a steep hillside above the northeast coast, and its lanes are narrow flights of steps rather than streets. Mining brought a boom in the Japanese colonial period and the town emptied when the seams closed, which is why so much of the old timber and tin architecture survived. Jiufen Old Street is now a tight covered corridor of taro-ball shops, tea houses and souvenir stalls, and the tiered Amei Teahouse with its red lanterns is the image most people arrive expecting. Above and below sit the Shengping Theater, once the largest cinema in northern Taiwan, and the neighbouring works at Jinguashi with its Gold Museum, Golden Waterfall and the copper-stained Yin-Yang Sea. It rains here most of the year, and the lanterns look best in the wet dusk.