We heard about Jioufen (九份) for quite a long time and never had a chance to visit. Since we have free time staying in Taipei during this trip, we decided to make an effort to visit this place. In the old days, Jioufen was a gold mining place discovered by Japanese when they occupied Taiwan. Japanese mined this area and took all the gold; and Jioufen became a small town in the history. In 1989, a famous movie director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) used Jioufen as the backdrop of his movie "A City of Sadness (悲情城市)". When the movie became a big hit in theaters, Jioufen revived and became a popular tourist attraction place.
It is a hilly town with a lot of steps up and down along with lots of food stores on both sides of the narrow stair walk-paths. It also has a beautiful scenery to look out to the nearby ocean. Unfortunate, it was raining on the day we visited, we couldn't see much of the ocean scenery. However, the rain did not stop any of the tourists, there were a lot of people there. Visited the hilly old town in the rain gave us a different experience and felling of visiting this famous attraction. We tried some famous snacks recommended by Fei's sisters and niece such as Yu-yuan(芋圓) and red bean cake. The red bean cake did bring back lots of memories of having them when we were very young. We visited the old town square and the nearby oldest movie theater. Both the old town square and the movie theater were part of scenes in "A City of Sadness".
When we got back to Taipei, the weather was still cloudy, therefore we just did indoor activities - shopping. Per recommendation, we shopped at iRoo. In the evening, we went back to one of our favorite restaurants KaoChi (高記) at Yong Kang Street (永康街) to enjoy their House Steamed Chicken Soup (原盅土雞湯), Shanghai Iron Pot Fried Bao (上海鐵鍋生煎包), and Green Bean Noodle Soup with Fried Beancurd (油豆腐細粉).
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