FFF&C's Awesome Adventures in Taiwan: Shifen and sky lanterns

We started the day with a plan to go to Jinguashi (金瓜石) and Jiufen (九份), two old gold-mining towns on the north coast. I'd been to Jiufen a couple of times before, and each time I'd caught the train from Taipei to Ruifang (瑞芳), then hiked from Ruifang station to Jiufen. With kids in-tow, we weren't planning on hiking from Ruifang this time, and so were going to try to catch a bus from Ruifang. We bought tickets to Ruifang from a vending machine in Taipei Main Station, then asked at the information desk to confirm details of where and how to catch the train. (As it turned out, there wasn't much to ask - any train heading east, that wasn't bound for Keelung, would have gone through Ruifang). Anyway, the woman at the information desk talked us out of going to Jinguashi and Jiufen by train. She recommended that if we wanted to go there then we should catch a bus directly, and that seeing as we'd already bought our train tickets to Ruifang we should stay on the trains and buy another day-tripper ticket to allow us to wander between Ruifang and a number of old towns up in the mountains. While in retrospect I'm not sure the advice was sound, we took it, bought the day-tripper from a special hidden counter at the train station, and wandered downstairs to find the right platform.

We had to change trains at Ruifang, and while we were waiting for the mountain train we went for a wander up what was sign-posted as "瑞芳老街" or "Ruifang Old Street". Typically an "old street" will have a lot of old Japanese-Era buildings. The sign-post turned out to be a bit misleading, as there wasn't that much of the old architecture left - one temple and an abandoned ruin. We bought some food and drinks at the local convenience store, and asked the attendant where exactly the "Old Street" was, and he basically told us that we'd already seen it. He clearly wasn't in the running for a job with the Ruifang Tourism Board.

Back at the station we got talking to a young couple waiting on the platform who were carrying a pet carrier - they had brought their pet rabbit with them on holidays while they were touring, which must have been fairly bewildering for the rabbit. The guy worked in his family business growing mushrooms down south. We enjoy a good farm or factory tour, so dropped some fairly heavy hints about the possibility of visiting, but it sounded like the farm was in a remote location.

The mountain train was a much smaller two-carriage affair, and we got off at Shifen (十分), an old coal-mining town up in the hills. Rail safety is interesting in Taiwan. There was a significant train accident in Hualian County while we were in Taiwan, where the train driver was killed and multiple passengers injured when a gravel truck got caught on a level crossing and the train went straight through it. The truck driver was spared because he'd got out of his cab to contemplate his truck stuck in the middle of a level crossing - so I anticipate that in due course he will be spending a lot of time in gaol. Rail safety in Shifen was particularly interesting, as to leave the station we all had to walk across the rails, and then the main street of Shifen was essentially the railway line. Presumably children in Shifen grow-up with trains pulling in and out past the front of their homes every day, and rail safety (or perhaps more accurately stopping playing on the rails when the train is coming) is a fundamental part of living to reach high school.

After playing on the main suspension bridge for a while we followed the signs out of town to the Shifen Waterfall. The route was poorly sign-posted, but after asking a security guard at what appeared to be a vacation resort we were able to get back on the right track. You have to pay for admission to the park around the waterfall, and then it's full of fairly tacky concrete statues and lots of picnic shelters. The falls themselves are okay, but not spectactular, particularly on a grey winter day like the one we had.

After taking in the waterfall we trekked back to Shifen, where we wandered in to one of the sky lantern shops. We had understood that sky lanterns were something that only happened at Lantern Festival (元宵節) the 15th day of the first lunar month of the year, the day of the first full moon, and so we hadn't expected to have a chance to see or touch sky lanterns. While there is large mass-launching of sky lanterns around Lantern Festival, it turns out that there are now people who will let you launch lanterns at pretty well any time. The shop we chose was one where the people didn't seem as pushy as some of the others, and it actually turned out to be a shop we'd seen featured on a television show. It was a lot of fun for the kids to decorate the lantern and for us to cover it in all the wishes we wanted to make. The guy who was running the store was one of the sons of the owner. He told us that he and his brothers and sisters were now all living overseas, and took turns to come back to Taiwan to live with their mother and help her run the business. The owner was a lovely little old Taiwanese grandmother who enjoyed Japanese soap operas on television - presumably from having been born during the Japanese occupation and so being educated in Japanese. The guy running the store talked to us about the process of experimentation they had been through to work out the design of the sky lanterns, including experimenting with different fuels for heating the air in the lantern. The successful formula was a blend of kerosene and cooking oil, with the cooking oil slowing down the burn to allow a longer, more-leisurely ascent - but also making the whole process a lot smokier. He even threw-in some fireworks for our lantern for free, to add a bit of colour, light and noise to the ascent. If the magic of the lanterns works, and our wishes are granted, then we can expect health and happiness for all relevant grandparents - oh, and world peace as well.