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.