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Tea In the Acclaimed Taiwanese Mountain Town of Jioufen
It’s a stormy afternoon. This is what I love more than anything.
On a drizzly Sunday afternoon in Taipei, my girlfriend and I hop on a bus to Jioufen, a town with a fascinating history that’s nestled in the mountains beyond the sea.
I rock in and out of sleep for most of the bus ride, opening my eyes as we pass through the outskirts of Taipei, then over steely rivers until the town feels smaller and smaller.
It rains heavier as we ascend into the mountains. We don’t have enough money to pay for the bus. A friendly couple pays for us without us really asking, then we walk together to the convenient store so I can get cash. The road is chaotic, bustling with tourists.
I buy an umbrella and pay them back. We knew we didn’t have enough money when we got on the bus. When I was younger, that’s something that would have terrified me. I see the world differently now. I guess I just expected we’d figure it out, so I settled into the ride. Things worked out just fine.
In the 1890s, gold was found in the hills of Jioufen, resulting in a gold rush which boomed during Japan’s fifty-year rule of Taiwan, from 1895 to 1945.
