The Pingxi Line: Pleasant, Placid (and Rainy)
This is it! I’m back in the United States. I can’t believe it. In fact, I’m even on my next adventure- a getaway to New Zealand thanks to a 20-minute fire sale by American Airlines. But it the meantime, I’m going to be chugging out these blog posts, before I forget all of the crazy memories that the trip has given me. You can read my other posts here.
What a wonderful scenic train line. Spanning 8 miles into the towering mountain ranges of Northern Taiwan, it opened in 1921 Japanese controlled Taiwan to transport coal down from the mountains. It has long since ceased those operations, and has found rejuvenation as a tourist line serving a medley of fun excursions for Taipeien (so it turns out there is no official word, or Dymonym, for people from Taipei) or international tourists.
Last post, you may have read about the Sandiaoling Waterfall trail that I had written about, but we actually had quite a few more excursions setting out on this fun little train line.
(Also, the “xi” in Pingxi (like Xi Jinping), does not use an English sound, but sounds roughly similar to “see”. Pinyin is the way of writing Chinese characters with English phonetics, but it is not a perfect salve for the different sounds in the Chinese language.)
Ruifang
While not typically a highlight of the Pingxi line, many of the trains terminate here, and it is frequently used as a transfer back to Taipei. However, we used it as a transfer point to Jiufen, as it was 15 minutes by bus away. We found ourselves in Ruifang too many times to count. On paper, the town is nothing special. Anchored by the train station, it’s a dense, compact, if rundown town, with the mill of street vendors, commotion, stores, and markets. But Lena, whose iPhone screen stopped working after she dropped it (it didn’t even crack!), wanted her phone fixed, so I went on an adventure to find an screen repair place. Now that seemingly most of the world owns a smartphone, cell phone shops are almost as ubiquitous to a town as 7/11s and other convenience stores.
I stumbled into one, and met two incredibly friendly youths working at one of them. There was a language barrier, but even so (and maybe because of it), we didn’t let that stop us. Using google translate, we were able to laugh and converse our way long enough into getting my inquiry across to fix the phone, and we then spent some time talking about this and that. It turns out Ken and Ruby were excited to meet me as we were the first Americans they had met! Lots of fun all around.
24 hours later, Lena had a brand new screen and a working iPhone. Lena and I both went to go pick the phone back up, and we talked some more, mostly through google translate and hand motions, but still, a lot of fun. Lena then decided to get her failing battery replaced, and we came back the following day not only to pick up the iPhone on its second revision, but to bring gifts of Candy as this was only a few days removed from Halloween. They loved our gift and came back with gifts of chips and fruit juice boxes! Funny how food and gift-giving works.
Other fun tidbits were getting Taiwanese Fried Chicken at a local shop and later on getting some fried Oreos at one of the vendors, who happily let me watch the process and take a couple photos.
Houtong Cat Village
Meow, meow meow meow. Meow!
For everyone else, the Houtong Cat Village is exactly as it sounds. A village of cats. The backstory is quite a heartwarming one. As I mentioned before, the Pingxi Line used to be a coal line, and Houtong was a village built for the nearby coal mine. When the mine shuttered several decades ago, the village unsurprisingly slipped into neglect and disrepair, with many moving away in search of better work.
Soon after, people would quietly abandon cats they could not take care of any longer in Houtong, leading to a large stray population. Volunteers soon took notice, and started taking care of the cats and feeding them. Then the tourists took notice, and soon started visiting Houtong just to say hello to all of the cats. As such, the residents embraced this new life given to the village, and it reincarnated as a tourist mecca for cat lovers.
The place itself doesn’t have too much to write about. There are lots of cats. There is a historic museum. There were many cats in said museum, staying dry from the rain. There were also cats in every other part of the village. People tried to pet the cats. Sometimes the cats obliged. Go if you like cats. Don’t go if you don’t like cats. It ain’t rocket science.
Shifen
Shifen was a short, evening excursion, and not as exciting as the others. The main draw to Shifen is the waterfall (we did Sandiaoling’s instead). The other main draw is the lantern releases they have, where you paint a Chinese lantern, and then let it go a-la hot-air balloon for good luck and fortune. We made it at the very end of the day, and only had a short time, as the train only leaves hourly at this time of day, but we (well, Lena) painted a fun lantern and released it with several others into the night sky. Shifen was also similar to Train Street like Hanoi, but Hanoi’s was better. It felt quite tourist trap-y, with shops and souvenirs galore, but it’s perhaps worth a short stop on a Pingxi Line Itinerary.
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What a fun excursion! Taiwan is full of delights, both on and off the tourist trail. I had a lovely time in this part, and arguably even a better part as we headed to the scenic east coast of the island country.
