Jiufen, red lanterns above the sea
Jiufen clings to a steep hillside in Ruifang, half an hour inland from Taiwan's northeast coast, and it exists because of gold. The Japanese-era mines made this a boom town in the 1930s, then closed and left behind a maze of stepped alleys, wooden balconies and shuttered shops that a later generation reopened as tea houses. Today the Jiufen Old Street is one of the island's most photographed places, and it earns the attention: a covered lane barely two people wide, packed with vendors selling taro balls in hot or iced sweet soup, peanut ice cream rolled in a crepe with coriander, fishball soup and pineapple cakes.
The image everyone comes for is the flight of steps on Shuqi Road, where the red lanterns of the old teahouses stack up the slope after dark, with the ocean somewhere below in the mist. A-Mei Teahouse, the wooden building at the corner, is the most recognisable of them — the whole scene is frequently linked with the bathhouse in Spirited Away, though the film's director has said it wasn't the source. Order a pot of Taiwanese oolong on a balcony anyway and watch the fog come and go over Keelung Mountain.
Jiufen rains a lot; that dampness is part of its character rather than a flaw. Pair it with Jinguashi next door, where the Gold Museum preserves the mine tunnels, the Crown Prince Chalet and a 220-kilogram gold ingot, and with the strange copper-stained Yin Yang Sea below. It is the easiest half-day escape from Taipei, and a good pause before heading down the coast.