Hakka country
Stretching southeast from Hsinchu, Hsinchu county is home to large numbers of Hakka people: though the ethnic group accounts for roughly fifteen percent of Taiwan’s population, eighty percent of Hsinchu claims Hakka ancestry. Beipu is the most famous Hakka town in north Taiwan, while the Yimin Temple near Xinpu is the centre of Hakka religious life on the island.
Beipu
Lying around 20km southeast of Hsinchu, just north of the Lion’s Head Mountain Scenic Area, the small town of BEIPU (北埔; běipŭ) is the centre of Hakka culture in north Taiwan, the counterpart of Meinong in the south. Though it’s a bit touristy these days, the compact area of old buildings and teahouses around Citian Temple has plenty of rustic charm, and it makes an easy excursion from Hsinchu or even Taipei.
Beipu’s tiny bus station is on Zhongzheng Road (中正路; zhōngzhèng lù), a short walk from the old part of town. Walk a few metres to Nanxing Street (南星街; nánxīngjiē) and turn right, passing some good places to try léichá, and on to the next junction with “old street” (aka Beipu Street; 北埔街; běipŭjiē), thick with touristy shops and food stalls. The shop on the corner is Lung Yuan Pastry Store (隆源餅行; lóngyuán bǐngháng), established in 1871 and maker of tasty sweet potato and taro cakes. Turn left here and head towards Citian Temple (慈天宮; cítiān gōng) at the end of “old street”, established in 1830 and the town’s main centre of worship. The Main Hall is dedicated to Guanyin, flanked by tablets on the right representing the sānguān dàdì (Three Great Emperor-Officials) and on the left, the sānshān guówáng (Three Mountain Kings), all Hakka favourites.
Beipu’s oldest and most appealing buildings are crammed into a relatively small area around the temple, a mixture of traditional red- and mud-brick Chinese houses, well worth exploring. To the south, the Zhongshu Tang (忠恕堂; zhōngshùtáng) built in 1922, is a charming Qing dynasty house with an unusual Baroque facade. Many of these houses are linked to the wealthy Jiang family – patriarch Jiang Xiou-nuan built the grand A-Hsin Jiang Residence (姜阿新宅; jiāng āxīn zhái) in the 1940s just to the north of the temple on Miaoqian Street (廟前街; miàoqiánjiē) in a blend of Western and Japanese styles. Like most of the buildings here, it’s still privately owned and closed to the public. Beyond here, on the corner of Zhongzheng Road is the traditional building known as Jinguangfu (金廣福; jīnguǎngfú), the old meeting hall built in the 1830s, and opposite, Tianshui Tang (天水堂; tiānshuǐtáng), a huge Chinese mansion still occupied by the Jiang family. Zhongzheng Road becomes a narrow alley east of here, containing some of the town’s most atmospheric teahouses.
God Pigs
One of the most controversial of Taiwan’s traditional religious practices is the rearing of “God Pigs” (神豬; shénzhū) – unfortunate hogs that are fed to grotesque size, often so large they can no longer walk. The pigs are used as offerings to the gods – it’s a particularly Hakka custom, used mostly at the Yimin Festival when literally hundreds are sacrificed. Pigs are killed the day before, by knife, and the carcass stretched over a metal cage so that it looks disturbingly similar in size to a small bus. It doesn’t take much imagination to work out why animal rights activists get upset about this: cases of force-feeding, alleged ill-treatment and the relatively simplistic method of slaughter have led to increased calls for a ban over the years. Hakka groups say that it’s a traditional part of their culture and that the pigs are well cared for. While it’s true that the tradition of offering pigs goes back to the 1830s, the official “contest” to see who has the biggest and intensive, modern factory methods are relatively new; many pigs are actually bought by Hakka families at the end of the fattening process (which can take two years) when they already sport monstrous proportions.
The Hakka
Known as kèjiārén in Chinese (“guest families”, or hak-kâ ngin in the Hakka language), the Hakka (客家人) are an ethnic sub-group of the Han Chinese family, with their own language, customs and traditions. Originally from the northern Chinese provinces of Henan and Shanxi, Hakka people began coming to Taiwan in the seventeenth century and have since developed a particularly strong identity. At first, Hakka migrants settled in Taipei county and along the western plains, but by the nineteenth century they had moved to the areas in which they predominate today: the mountainous parts of Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli counties, and in the Kaohsiung-Pingdong area. Though few Hakka are farmers today, they’re still regarded as hard workers and have a reputation for producing some of the island’s top scholars and writers: famous Hakka people include ex-president Lee Teng-hui, Soong Mei-ling (Chiang Kai-shek’s wife) and film director Hou Hsiao-hsien. Mainland Chinese leaders Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping were also Hakka.
Hakka people subscribe to the same religious beliefs as other Chinese groups in Taiwan, but they also have their own special gods and festivals. The worship of the Yimin (義民; yìmín; mostly in north Taiwan) is unique to Taiwan, while the island also has around 145 temples dedicated to the Three Mountain Kings (三山國王; sānshān guówáng), protective spirits of the Hakka and a tradition that came from Guangdong.
The Council for Hakka Affairs was created by the government in 2001 to help preserve Hakka culture on the island, and to ensure its language survives: there are several dialects spoken in Taiwan, with sìxiàn being the most important, and the one you’ll hear on train announcements. Hakka TV (客家電視台; kèjiā diànshìtái), a 24-hour station, has been on air since 2003.
Léichá
Beipu is the best place in Taiwan to sample léichá (擂茶), or “ground tea”, a popular Hakka drink with origins in ancient China. Its modern incarnation is one hundred percent contemporary Taiwan however; a green tea mixed with a paste of peanuts, sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds. It’s delicious and very filling (it’s sometimes called “cereal tea”), but the twist is that you get to prepare it yourself. DIY sessions are offered at most of the teashops in town, and in general you are expected to at least have a go, the staff sometimes reluctant to pitch in. After a few minutes you’ll understand why; the raw ingredients are placed into a ceramic bowl and must be pounded into an oily paste with a giant wooden pestle, a process which takes a strong arm, or preferably, several. The tea is usually served with Hakka-style muaji (máshŭ in Mandarin), sticky rice rolled in ground peanuts.
Hsinchu
Just 86km and 34 minutes from Taipei by High Speed Rail, HSINCHU (新竹; xīnzhú) is one of the wealthiest cities in Taiwan, largely as a result of the huge revenues generated by the Science Park on its southeastern border. Yet tucked away in the centre are remnants of one of north Taiwan’s oldest cities, with plenty to offer casual visitors: temples and traditional food stalls reflect the city’s historic roots while the absorbing Glass Museum is testimony to its central role in Taiwan’s glass industry. It’s also the gateway to the heart of Taiwan’s Hakka country, centred on the town of Beipu.
Jiufen and Jinguashi
The historic gold mining town of Jiufen, an easy day-trip from Taipei or Keelung, occupies a stunning hillside location with fine views of the northeast coast. It’s justifiably renowned for its tasty snack food and atmospheric teahouses, though despite the hype, the town itself is architecturally fairly typical and not especially attractive. From Jiufen, the road runs 2km over the Mount Keelung ridge to Jinguashi, fast becoming a major tourist destination in its own right and far more interesting. Most of the town’s mining-related attractions have been absorbed into the Gold Ecological Park, an ambitious project that combines restored Japanese buildings with old mining tunnels and ruined temples.
Brief history
Gold was discovered in the Keelung River in 1889, and in 1896 the Japanese began intensive mining in the area, dividing the land split by Mount Keelung between two government-run companies named after the officers in command: the concession operated by Tanaka Group became Jinguashi, while Fujita Group developed Jiufen. The gold ore on the Jiufen side was less pure and in 1899 the Japanese began to lease the concession to local entrepreneur Yen Yun-nien who founded the Taiyang Mining Corp in 1920 and began sub-leasing smaller chunks of land to Chinese prospectors. As a consequence, Jiufen developed haphazardly as a series of independent claims, gaining a reputation as a get-rich-quick town, or Little Hong Kong, in the 1930s.
Taiyang ceased all operations in Jiufen in 1971, and though artists started to settle here in the early 1980s, the good times seemed to be over – Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1989 movie City of Sadness, in large part shot in a then atmospheric Jiufen, changed all that. The film was the first to make reference (very indirectly) to the 2-28 Incident and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Overnight the town became a must-see attraction, creating the tourist carnival that still exists today. One of its admirers is Hayao Miyazaki, who used Jiufen as inspiration for the village in his Japanese anime hit Spirited Away (2001).
In contrast, the Japanese maintained direct control over Jinguashi until 1945, the town developing in an orderly, pragmatic fashion. Its silver and especially copper deposits, discovered in 1905, became far more important than gold – by the 1930s the town was home to around 80,000 people with the hills honeycombed by a staggering 600km of tunnels. Mining finally ceased in 1987 when debts bankrupted the state-owned Taiwan Metal Mining Company – there’s still gold in the hills but it’s become too expensive to extract commercially.
Jinguashi
Nestling in a small valley, just over the hill from Jiufen, JINGUASHI (金瓜石; jīnguāshí) has only a handful of inhabitants and plenty of atmospheric alleys and streets to explore. Much of the old village is preserved within the absorbing Gold Ecological Park, an industrial heritage area that covers the western half of the valley.
Jiufen
The narrow backstreets of JIUFEN (九份; jiŭfèn) are generally vehicle-free and, away from the busier areas, local life proceeds remarkably undisturbed. Most visitors get off the bus adjacent to the Keting Parking Area at the top end of town, proceeding downhill straight into Jishan Street (基山街; jīshān jiē) to gorge on its vast array of snacks. However, if you fancy some exercise before tucking in, it’s not far up the road to the trailhead for Mount Keelung (基隆山; jīlóngshān). On a fine day the short but steep hike to the summit (588m) offers a spectacular panorama of both Jiufen and Jinguashi (allow 30min for an easy hike up).
Back in town, if you keep walking along Jinshan Street you’ll eventually reach Jiufen’s most picturesque corner, Shuqi Road (豎崎路; shùqí lù), actually a series of stone steps slicing through the middle of town and lined with teahouses and old buildings. Walk downhill to the junction with Qingpian Road, turn left along the road and you’ll eventually come to a small square in front of the entrance to Wufankeng (五番坑; wŭfānkēng) or No. 5 Mine, an evocative relic of Jiufen’s mining days – it’s locked up but you can still peer through the bars. Retrace your steps to Shuqi Road and a short walk in the other direction along Qingpian you’ll see gaudy Chenghuang Temple (城隍廟; chénghuáng miào), housing Jiufen’s City God. Continuing downhill, back on Shuqi Road, you’ll end up at a junction on the main road, with the bus stop on the opposite side.
Prisoner of war camps in Taiwan
Thailand’s “death railway” is notorious in the English-speaking world (in part thanks to the film Bridge on the River Kwai), but few people are aware that the Japanese operated at least fifteen POW camps in Taiwan during World War II. More than 4300 men were incarcerated on the island, most of them British or Commonwealth troops captured in Hong Kong or Singapore, Dutch from Indonesia and Americans from the Philippines. Life was as brutal for the POWs here as anywhere else in Asia, with each camp revolving around a system of forced labour: in Camp No. 1, also known as Kinkaseki (金瓜石戰俘營; jīnguāshí zhànfúyíng), near Jinguashi, prisoners were forced to work in the Japanese copper mine in appalling conditions, while those at Taichu Camp (Camp No. 2), near Taichung, worked on a massive flood channel – many died from starvation, disease and ill-treatment. The camps were largely forgotten after the war, but thanks to a long campaign by former prisoners and expats living in Taiwan, a memorial was erected at the Kinkaseki site in 1997, and in 1999 the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society was formed to research all POW camps on the island (wwww.powtaiwan.org). Several plaques have since been erected all over Taiwan, and a short memorial service takes place at Kinkaseki every year around November 11.
Keelung
The port city of KEELUNG (基隆; jīlóng), sandwiched between verdant mountains and northern Taiwan’s best natural harbour, is a strategic location that has been fought over by foreign powers since the seventeenth century. Though it’s a typically modern Taiwanese city, home to around 400,000 people, its setting is picturesque and there’s plenty to see: numerous fortresses, a legacy of the city’s violent past, the Fairy Cave, one of Taiwan’s most atmospheric shrines, an easy-to-navigate night market and the country’s largest and most illuminating Ghost Festival, held every August.
Brief history
The Spanish first established an outpost on Heping Island near Keelung in 1626, when the area was inhabited by the Ketagalan, who called it “Kelang”. In 1642 the Dutch kicked out the Spaniards after a bloody siege, but they abandoned their last stronghold in Taiwan in 1668. Chinese immigrants began to arrive in large numbers in 1723 and the town became an important port in the nineteenth century, making it a regular target for foreign powers; during the 1841 Opium War a British squadron shelled the harbour, while in the Sino-French War the city was occupied by the French for eight months. The harbour was almost completely destroyed by Allied bombing at the end of World War II, and the postwar years saw a gradual rebuilding of its facilities – it’s now Taiwan’s second-biggest container port after Kaohsiung.