Jiufen is a village of a few thousand people stacked up a steep hillside above the Pacific in Ruifang District, about forty kilometres north east of Taipei, and it exists because of gold. A strike in the 1890s turned a settlement of nine households, which is what the name refers to, into a boom town that the Japanese administration developed intensively, and when the mines closed in the 1970s it emptied out and very nearly died. THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DAYLIGHT: a dense grey-roofed town clinging to a slope with the sea behind it, which is a completely different place from the lantern-lit postcard most people arrive expecting.
AND THE STORY YOU HAVE PROBABLY HEARD IS NOT TRUE. Jiufen is sold everywhere as the inspiration for the bathhouse town in SPIRITED AWAY, and HAYAO MIYAZAKI HAS DENIED IT. The real film connection is Taiwanese and better: HOU HSIAO-HSIEN SHOT A CITY OF SADNESS HERE IN 1989, the first Taiwanese film to deal openly with the 228 Incident and the beginning of the White Terror, and it won the Golden Lion at Venice. That film is what brought visitors back to a village that was emptying, so Jiufen's revival is a story about Taiwan confronting its own history rather than an animation anecdote.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, Roman Trail earns a small commission at no extra cost to you.
What Is Here
THE OLD STREET IS A STAIRCASE AND THAT IS THE DEFINING PRACTICAL FACT. JIUFEN OLD STREET, Jishan Street, runs along the contour as a covered lane barely two people wide, and SHUQI ROAD crosses it as a long flight of stone steps straight up the hill, lined with teahouses. The second photograph is the lane in full sun. There is no flat route through this village and no way to see it without climbing: the steps are narrow, uneven, polished by a century of feet and SLICK IN THE RAIN, which on this coast is most of the winter.
THE TEAHOUSES ARE THE POINT AND THE BEST ONES ARE UPSTAIRS. The A-MEI TEAHOUSE, the much-photographed wooden building with red lanterns at the bend of Shuqi Road, is the one on every poster; it and its neighbours serve proper gongfu tea on balconies looking out over the roofs to the sea, which is worth the price and the wait. You pay for the tea and the table rather than a cup, and sitting with it for an hour is the intended use.
STAY THE NIGHT, WHICH IS THE SINGLE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE ABOUT JIUFEN. Day-trip coaches from Taipei arrive through the afternoon and the lanes become genuinely impassable between about two and six. THE LANTERNS IN THE THIRD PHOTOGRAPH COME ON AFTER THE BUSES LEAVE, and the village between seven and nine in the evening, with the lanterns lit, the mist coming off the sea and most of the crowd gone, is the thing people think they are coming for and mostly miss. There are guesthouses on the hill. If you cannot stay, come early rather than late.
AND JINGUASHI NEXT DOOR IS THE OTHER HALF OF THE HILL AND IT IS NOT CHARMING. A fifteen-minute bus or a walk away, the GOLD MUSEUM sits in the old Japanese mining complex and holds a 220-kilogram gold ingot you can touch. Below it the THIRTEEN LEVELS, the ruined terraced smelter, stand roofless on the hillside like something industrial and abandoned on a vast scale. AND JINGUASHI WAS KINKASEKI, a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp where more than a thousand Allied prisoners, most of them British, were worked in the copper mines under conditions that killed a great many of them. There is a memorial park at the site. A visitor coming up here for lanterns and tea should know that is also what this hill is.
When to Go
October to April is drier and that matters more here than the temperature. This is the north east coast, which catches the winter monsoon head on, and JIUFEN IS ONE OF THE WETTEST INHABITED PLACES IN TAIWAN: persistent drizzle and sea mist for weeks at a time from roughly November to March. The mist is half the atmosphere and the wet stone is the hazard.
Daytime is the mid to high teens in winter and the high twenties to low thirties in summer, with high humidity year round and a sea wind on the exposed stretches that makes it feel cooler than the number.
MAY TO OCTOBER IS WARMER, BUSIER AND IS TYPHOON SEASON. The typhoon season is the one thing that reshapes a Taiwan itinerary, and the FCDO gives it a named warning on the landing page rather than burying it. Its wording is that the season normally runs MAY TO NOVEMBER, that typhoons can affect Taiwan in June, that THE MOST ACTIVE PERIOD IS BETWEEN JULY AND SEPTEMBER, and that frequency gradually decreases in October. The consequence it names is not wind but ground: THERE IS A RISK OF ROAD BLOCKAGES AND LANDSLIDES AFTER TYPHOONS, ESPECIALLY IN CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN TAIWAN, which is exactly where the mountain roads and the gorge routes are. The operative advice is the FCDO's own: monitor the CENTRAL WEATHER ADMINISTRATION, be flexible with your plans, and expect roads, schools and offices to close, with the closures published by the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration and road status by the Directorate General of Highways. A Taiwanese typhoon day is an announced shutdown rather than a guess, so the information exists if you look for it. For Jiufen specifically the consequence is the road: the coastal and hill routes from Ruifang are narrow and prone to landslide, and the village has been cut off before.
AND THE DAILY RHYTHM MATTERS MORE THAN THE SEASON. Weekdays are far better than weekends, and the hours before noon or after six are far better than the middle of the afternoon in any month.
Getting There
Train to Ruifang, then a bus, which is the reliable way. From Taipei Main Station the local or express train to RUIFANG takes about forty to fifty minutes, and from outside Ruifang station the 788 or 1062 bus climbs to Jiufen in fifteen to twenty minutes. The queue at Ruifang on a weekend is long and the buses are frequent.
THE 1062 BUS RUNS DIRECT FROM ZHONGXIAO FUXING in Taipei in about an hour and a quarter, which avoids the change and is slower in traffic.
GET AN EASYCARD, because you will use it on the train, the bus and in shops, and the bus is awkward with cash. The same card covers the whole island.
AND DO NOT DRIVE UP IF YOU CAN AVOID IT. The lanes are too narrow for cars, parking on the hill is minimal and heavily contested at weekends, and the approach roads are steep with blind bends. A taxi from Ruifang is cheap and sensible if the bus queue is absurd. Jiufen also pairs naturally with the PINGXI LINE, the branch railway through the valley where the sky lanterns are released, and with the coastal stops towards Bitou and Longdong.
The Jiufen Packing List
Persistent rain and sea mist, polished stone steps on a steep hill, high humidity, and a village best seen in the evening.
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the right layer for this particular village because of what the day actually looks like: you climb a hill and get warm, you sit still in an open-fronted teahouse for an hour and get cold, and in winter you are damp the whole time from mist rather than from rain. WOOL KEEPS ITS WARMTH WHEN DAMP, which is exactly the condition here, where a cotton or synthetic top leaves you cold the moment you stop climbing.
A Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket, which is the most useful item in the bag from November to March. A folding umbrella is nearly useless on Shuqi Road, because the lane is covered in places, narrow everywhere and crowded, so an umbrella becomes a hazard to other people's faces while a hood does not.
Salomon X Ultra 4 GTX hiking shoes, or at minimum a closed shoe with a real tread. THIS IS THE ITEM THAT DECIDES WHETHER YOU ENJOY JIUFEN. The steps are narrow, uneven and polished smooth, they are wet for much of the year, and the village is unwalkable in a sandal or a smooth sole. People fall here.
Darn Tough merino hiking socks, for a day that is almost entirely stairs, and because you will take your shoes off in a traditional teahouse.
Not linked and worth packing: A SMALL BAG YOU CAN WEAR IN FRONT OF YOU, because the lanes are shoulder to shoulder in the afternoon and a backpack is both a nuisance and an easy target in a crush; NOTHING WHEELED if you are staying the night, since there is no flat route to any guesthouse; CASH IN SMALL NOTES for the stalls and the teahouses; A LIGHT, since the steps away from the main lane are poorly lit after dark; AND SUNSCREEN for the summer, which this registry does not carry.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women in Jiufen
Emergency numbers in Taiwan: 110 reaches the police and 119 the fire service and ambulance. 118 IS THE COASTGUARD, which matters on an island where the hazard is often the sea rather than the land. 113 IS A DEDICATED DOMESTIC ABUSE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT HOTLINE, which the FCDO lists on its own getting-help page and which very few of the advisories in this library name at all; it is staffed and it is the number to have. And 0800 024 111 is the INFORMATION FOR FOREIGNERS IN TAIWAN helpline, which answers in English and is the general-purpose line for anything that is not an emergency. Mobile coverage and public wifi in Taiwan are among the best anywhere.
THE LIKELIEST INJURY HERE IS A FALL AND IT IS NOT A TRIVIAL ONE. Jiufen is a hillside of narrow stone staircases polished by a century of use, wet for much of the year from drizzle and sea mist, with low handrails or none, often in a dense moving crowd and sometimes in the dark. A SLIP ON SHUQI ROAD IS A FALL DOWN STEPS RATHER THAN A STUMBLE. The defences are unglamorous: shoes with a real tread, a hand free rather than both on a phone or an umbrella, going down slowly, and keeping to the side rather than the middle when a coach party is coming up. The same village is EFFECTIVELY INACCESSIBLE to anyone with significant mobility difficulty, which is worth knowing honestly before planning a trip around it.
THE CROWD IS THE OTHER DAILY HAZARD AND IT IS MANAGEABLE BY TIMING. Between roughly two and six in the afternoon the main lane becomes a slow-moving press of people in a space two wide, which is uncomfortable, makes a bag easy to open and makes the steps harder to take safely. Come before noon, or stay the night and walk it at seven. The FCDO's crime note for Taiwan is that crime against foreigners is rare with occasional thefts in crowded areas, and this lane is the kind of crowded area it means.
UK FCDO: there are NO advised-against areas in Taiwan, the phrase does not appear anywhere in the advice, and the regional risks page does not exist. That is worth saying plainly, because the cross-strait situation leads people to assume a restriction that is not there. What the FCDO does carry is a TYPHOON SEASON WARNING on the landing page, an earthquake section, and the recognition problem described in the embassy row below. On crime its wording is unusually short and unusually favourable: 'Crime rates are extremely low in Taiwan. However, travellers are advised to remain vigilant, monitor local media, and follow local law enforcement.' Read 19 October 2026, the landing page having been updated on 28 August 2026. The State Department publishes a Taiwan advisory at the standard path and it answers 403 to this environment behind Cloudflare, so read the current level there directly rather than trusting a figure printed anywhere, including here.
Earthquakes are a genuine risk in Taiwan rather than a theoretical one, and the FCDO says so without a figure. The island sits on the collision between the Philippine Sea and Eurasian plates and it moves often. Most tremors are harmless and the building standards are high, which is why the practical content is about preparation rather than probability: the FCDO points at the US Federal Emergency Management Agency's guidance on what to do before, during and after a quake, and notes that TAIPEI CITY GOVERNMENT PUBLISHES AN ONLINE DIGITAL BOOKLET of useful information. The habits that matter are the ordinary ones, which are to know that you move away from windows and under cover rather than running outside, to keep shoes and a light within reach of the bed, and to understand that in a tall Taipei building the safest thing is almost always to stay in it. Taiwan also pushes emergency alerts to every phone in an affected area.
And three local points. THE ROAD UP CAN CLOSE, because the approaches from Ruifang are narrow and landslide-prone after heavy rain or a typhoon, so a visit in bad weather is a plan that may not survive the morning. IF YOU GO ON TO PINGXI for the sky lanterns, those are released with a burning fuel cell inside a paper balloon and they come down somewhere: the practice is controversial locally for exactly that reason, and it is worth deciding knowingly rather than arriving at it. AND THE CONSULAR POSITION applies island-wide: neither the US nor the UK has an embassy in Taiwan, both run de facto missions in Taipei, which is an hour away, and the FCDO states that its support is limited.
Taiwan has no reciprocal health agreement with the UK and none with the United States, and the FCDO is specific about what that means on the ground: HOSPITALS OPERATE ON A PAY AS YOU USE BASIS, so you need both travel health insurance and accessible funds to cover treatment and possible repatriation. Taiwanese healthcare is otherwise excellent and inexpensive by western standards, some facilities have English-speaking staff, and the FCDO maintains a list of providers where some staff speak English. ONE DETAIL WORTH KNOWING BEFORE YOU NEED IT, in the FCDO's own words: 'Unlike in the UK, an ambulance crew will not usually include a paramedic.' Dial 119 for an ambulance. TWO HEALTH FACTS ARE CURRENT RATHER THAN GENERAL. The FCDO records A SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN DENGUE FEVER IN THE SOUTH OF TAIWAN, naming KAOHSIUNG AND TAINAN, so mosquito precautions are a daytime routine there rather than an evening one, because the dengue mosquito bites by day; and ALTITUDE SICKNESS IS A RISK IN PARTS OF TAIWAN, which surprises people who think of the island as tropical and low, since the central range runs well above 3,000 metres. AND A LEGAL POINT THAT BELONGS IN A PACKING LIST RATHER THAN A HEALTH SECTION: you may not bring CANNABIS OIL OR ANY CANNABIS-DERIVED MEDICATION into Taiwan EVEN IF IT IS LEGALLY PRESCRIBED WHERE YOU LIVE. Bring the prescription for anything else you carry, in an amount consistent with what the prescription states.
US State Department travel advisory: the Taiwan advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/taiwan, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Main hospital: there is no hospital in Jiufen. The nearest facilities are in RUIFANG and KEELUNG, twenty to thirty minutes down the hill, and the major hospitals are in TAIPEI and NEW TAIPEI, about an hour away, which for a village this small is reasonable rather than remote. The practical consequence of the geography is narrower than it sounds: AN AMBULANCE CANNOT REACH MOST OF THIS VILLAGE, because the lanes are stairs, so a casualty on Shuqi Road is carried down to the road by hand. That is the real argument for taking the steps seriously. Hospitals work on a PAY AS YOU USE basis, so carry accessible funds. Dial 119 for an ambulance and 0800 024 111 for English-language help.
Official health authority: the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control. covers the Taiwan CDC
Embassy contact: THERE IS NO US OR UK EMBASSY IN TAIWAN, because neither government recognises Taiwan as a state, and each runs a de facto mission instead. For American citizens that is the American Institute in Taiwan, which performs the consular functions an embassy would, including passports, emergency assistance and notarial services, with offices in Taipei and Kaohsiung. For British nationals it is the British Office Taipei, and the FCDO states plainly that because the UK has no diplomatic relations with Taiwan, LIMITED SUPPORT IS AVAILABLE. Neither of these is a reduced-service postbox: both function normally for routine consular work. What the non-recognition changes is the diplomatic weight behind you in a serious matter, which is a reason to carry good insurance and to register your trip rather than a reason not to come.
Official tourism authority: the Taiwan Tourism Administration. covers the island, and its 0800 024 111 line is the practical way to check whether the Ruifang road is open after heavy rain and what the current bus arrangements are
Takeaways
Miyazaki has denied the Spirited Away story. The film that actually saved Jiufen is A City of Sadness, 1989.
Stay the night or come before noon. The lanterns come on after the coaches leave.
The whole village is polished stone steps and it rains for months. Grippy shoes decide the day.
Jinguashi next door was Kinkaseki, a Japanese POW camp where British prisoners died in the copper mines.
Solo women safety assessment: Jiufen is an easy and very safe place to visit alone, and staying the night alone here is one of the better decisions available in northern Taiwan. Taiwan records crime against foreigners as extremely low, the village is full of visitors and families until the evening, the guesthouses are used to single travellers, eating alone at a stall or a teahouse is completely normal, and 113 IS A DEDICATED DOMESTIC ABUSE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT HOTLINE listed by the FCDO with 0800 024 111 an English-language line for anything else. THE REAL RISK IS THE GROUND UNDER YOUR FEET. This is a hillside of narrow polished stone staircases, wet for much of the year from drizzle and sea mist, with low handrails or none, and a slip on Shuqi Road is a fall down steps rather than a stumble; shoes with a real tread, one hand free rather than both on a phone and an umbrella, and taking the descent slowly are the whole defence. An ambulance cannot reach most of the village because the lanes are stairs. THE SECOND CONSIDERATION IS TIMING RATHER THAN SAFETY: between two and six the main lane is a dense slow crush, which is where the FCDO's note about occasional theft in crowded areas applies, so wear a small bag in front of you, and come before noon or stay until the evening. The road up from Ruifang is landslide-prone after heavy rain, so a wet-weather visit may not survive the morning. Keep the mobility point in mind honestly: this village is effectively inaccessible to anyone who cannot manage a lot of steps. There are NO advised-against areas anywhere in Taiwan. 110 police, 119 ambulance, 113 assault hotline.
Reading On
Jiufen is a day or a night out of Taipei and this library covers the island around it. An hour west, the Taipei packing list covers the capital almost every Jiufen visitor comes from and returns to, and the Taipei travel guide for women carries the day trip up here in its own section. Down the west coast, the Taichung packing list covers the central city with the island's best climate, the Tainan packing list the old capital and its temples, and the Kaohsiung packing list the southern port. Over the mountains on the east coast, the Hualien packing list covers the gateway city, the Taroko packing list the marble gorge, and the Taitung packing list the quietest county in Taiwan. Inland, the Sun Moon Lake packing list covers the highland lake. For the island as a whole, the Taiwan packing list and the Taiwan travel guide for women carry the regions, the seasons and the etiquette in full. For why wool is the fibre that works when you are damp from mist rather than rain, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
