Day 4 in Taiwan...
Went to this little town located within the hills in northest of Taiwan called 'Jiu Fen', a gold mine turned tourist spot that only opens during saturdays and sundays. The only way for you to get up there is only by tours. No self-driven tourists because the town is really small and no cars can be parked there for long.
Which practically means '9 portions'.
Wonder why it's called 9 portions?
It is said that long time ago there were only 9 families staying in JiuFen. And before any roads on land were built, all the materials these families needed were transported via ships. Thus a habit was formed that 9 pieces of the same objects were purchased at one time. Hence, the place was names JiuFen.
(The following part is taken off the net because i couldn't remember the other part of the history of JiuFen. hehe)
JiuFen used to be the center of gold mining. It is next to the mountain and facing the sea.
In 1890, someone struck gold near JiuFen. The poor village with only 9 families soon attracted prospectors of 4000 families. The village once was gold city of Asia and called little Shanghai or little Hong Kong. However, with the decline of gold mining activities, Jiufen faded.
There were several movies shot here too like Sad City that won 1st place in Venice Film Festival, awakening people's memories of Jiufen.
The entrance of JiuFen.
Another thing JiuFen is famous for is for their Tea.
They have some pretty awesome chinese tea there.
There was this shop that sells really cute porcelain flutes.
Bought some of these cute handmade 1 of a kind owls.
Every color, every jade and crystals has it's own functions.
Like yellow is for health, green is for studies and pink for fate.
It's 1 of a kind because you can never find an owl with the same cloth pattern even if it's both the same color.
After that we went to a place to see remarkable rocks formed by the strong splashing of waves that carved shapes on the limestones. There were a lot of funny shapes but i'm only showing you 2 of their most famous ones.
Ginger.
Queen's Head.
Here's some random camwhoring session we had.
For dinner, we visited another night market.
There was this seafood stall that had this dried pufferfish.
Sad but it looked cute...
Oh and for the biggest highlight of my Taiwan trip.....
I felt EARTHQUAKE!!!!
If I'm not mistaken, it was a 3 magnitude earthquake that came from a 8-9 magnitude earthquake from this place called 'Hua Lian' which is about 3-5 hours drive away from Taipei city.
It was scary at 1st but uber COOL after because we got to experience earthquake!!!!
Here's my aunt, cousin sis and I being goondoos staring at the bottle of water seeing if there were anymore after shakes as we felt like 2 more other small shakes.
EARTHQUAKE!!!!!!
Labels: Trips