Jiu Fen is So Fun! Part Two

“What does Jiu Fen mean?”

“Nine sections.”

“I thought fun meant rice?”

“That’s fun. ‘fen’ is sections. ‘fun’ is rice.”

…And that was basically our conversation as Frank tried to teach me the many tonal meanings of homophones.

Jiu Fen is located in the northern part of Taiwan. It became popular when gold was discovered (that’s also how San Francisco became popular!). The charismatic city kept a lot of its old-world charm…

But let’s talk about food:

Within the winding cobble-stoned alley sits a stored called Grandma Lai’s Yuyuan. It serves various styles of Yu Yuan, which is sweet taro balls topped with fruit and red beans in a little bit of syrupy soup. I literally have no basis for comparison for this desserty-type of snack. Most desserts I’m familiar with are either Twinkies or ding dongs. I’m actually kidding about both of those, but taro balls aren’t something I eat normally. We ordered our taro and jelly warm, with slices of mango, lychee and red beans on top. It was just the right amount of sweet and the warm syrup was great on a breezy day.

Green Tea at A Mei Tea House. Part of the tea drinking process.

We took yet another opportunity to warm up at the A Mei Tea House. The tea house was famous because it might have been in a Taiwanese romantic movie of some sort. The server explained in Mandarin how to seep the light green tea we ordered and how to drink it. Then we spent about an hour trying to perfectly imitate step-by-step her complicated demonstration ourselves. The tea house is perched up high enough that we could see the coastline while enjoying our tea.

“Peanut and mochi ice cream!” a man yelled in Mandarin.

“Peanut and mochi ice cream!” Frank yelled in excitement… while knocking down children running towards the guy.

It’s not the typical ultra sweet ice cream that gets stocked in American grocery stores. It’s a much lighter, yet deliciously fulfilling peanut-tasting, cannoli-ish ice cream.

What a view!

From just about every angle, the beauty of the area is really breath-taking. The crisp green hills are sandwiched between the endless blue sky and ocean. The main part of the town is still modeled like how it was during the Gold Rush. There were probably fewer people back then, so alleyways are skinny and pathways are cobbled. It’s a different story now: we shimmied in between crowds of people, yet we don’t regret a single moment of our shoulder to shoulder encounters.

Talk about crowds… Choose a path and go! A simple path and one of the many in Jiu Fen.

You can find some peace among the tons of hiking paths all over Jiu Fen. Some are more strenuous than others. We took an easy one during our visit, up a set of enchanted stairs and through some dirt path with an ocean view to a gazebo. By the time we reached the gazebo we were hungry again~

“Want to eat some more?” Frank said.

“Hell yes!”

As we ended our visit back in the labyrinthine alleyways sitting on tiny wooden stools eating mouthwatering minced pork rice noodle soup and fried fishcake tempura, we realized why this place was so crowded…

The Food.

A temple below old town. Now it’s Your Turn

Check out our Taiwan Itinerary for tips on how to get to Jiu Fen. Go a little hungry, there’s a lot of food to eat!

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