Week 56.18 – Taipei 台北: Jinguashi 金瓜石

Where: Ruifang Old Street 瑞芳老街 and Jinguashi 金瓜石

How: Took the train to Ruifang 瑞芳, then bus 886 or 778 from the bus station across the street from the front of the Ruifang train station.  From Ruifang to Jinguashi takes around 40 minutes.  There are also bus from Keelung and Taipei Main Station.

Jinguashi ~~~

I went to Ruifang with one of my hostel-mates but she was going to Jiufen.  We used our easycard and took the TzeChang 自強號 from Taipei Main Station to Badu 八堵 and then transferring to the slower train.  It took the same time just to take the local change all the way but at least we had a seat for the first 40 minutes.

Ruifang’s old street

I split with my hostel-mate shortly arriving at Ruifang.  I decided to stop by Ruifang’s old street, which is located at the rear exit of the station.  It’s just half a block and not really much of an old street.  However, I did find a nice nostalgic dessert place.

Ruifang’s Dessert store

The dessert store is called 保雲芋圓.  The story on the wall says the owner married into this small rural town and first sold plum juices before selling these dessert treats – all handmade, to passerby .. and she loves her taro and taro dumplings 😛

salt before sweet

I had some tofu before devouring my yummy dessert.  Addy: 北市瑞芳區瑞芳街8號.

I got on the bus and headed towards Jinguashi Gold Ecological Park 金瓜石黃金博物館.  The admission is free except for certain activities and exhibition areas such as the Benshen fifth tunnel 本山五坑.

The first stop was the tourist center, where one can sign up for guided tours (which I unfortunately missed).  Across from the tourists center is also a path that takes visitors to one of the movie sets for the City of Sadness 悲情城市, which helped revitalized the area of Ruifang.

JinGuaShi Gold Ecological Park

The building next to the tourist center is a rebuilt of a Japanese dormitory that use to house engineers and their family from the Japanese Mining Co.  Everything was painstakingly restored using old technique and materials when available.

living room

The admission is free but they only allow 20 people inside at one time and it is fully guided by volunteers.

the kitchen

There were a lot of exhibitions about the history of mining, the equipment that they used to find gold, how it was like to be a miner etc . . .

exhibition on equipments

I went into the Benshan Fifth Tunnel 本山五坑, one of nine tunnels used for mining but has since been closed.  The tunnel was actually closed off and it wasn’t until recently that the tunnel was re-excavated and opened.  There are other tunnels but they are closed off for safety reasons.

mining

The admission is 50NT and were also given a paper hat to wear beneath our safety helmet.  A little introduction and we were on our way to inside the tunnel.

heading into the tunnel

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mannequins digging away

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drilling

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resting

The end of the tunnel is actually just above the entrance.

Next to the tunnel is the Museum of Gold, which talks about the history of Gold, not just in Taiwan but the world, and some more mining equipment, history of the Benshan tunnels, as well as a little history of the WW2 POW that were forced to work here too.  It said that they worked in really bad conditions and often the most dangerous section of the mine.

chunk of gold at the end of the exhibition

The end of the gold exhibition also has a chunk of gold!

sit and ride 😛

The area is actually quite big but I mainly stayed at the center area in the park.  A website about the park: http://www.gep-en.ntpc.gov.tw/econtent/about/about.asp

The lady at the tourist center advised that I can take a visitor bus down towards the Jinshangua Waterfall.  Walking is just 15 minutes but it has many turns and twists going up and down hill and walking might be a bit dangerous.  The bus comes once every half an hour during peak hours.

黃金瀑布 – Jinguashi Waterfall

Rainwater enters many of these mine shafts and brings out with them the minerals – hence forming this Gold Waterfall.

The bus ride also took us pass many places in Jinguashan including the Shuinandong Smelter 水湳洞精鍊廠, which was use to sort, smelt and refine ore.  It is 13 stories and built along the slopes of a hill (no photo but looks quite impressive).

Chitang

The bus also passed by Chitang 祈堂老街, an old and once prosperous mining town, with many traditional shops and residences.

Yin Yang Sea

The bus driver got to the end of his route and allowed us to get off for 5 minutes to view the Yin Yang Sea 陰陽海.  It has two colours – the blue and yellow.  It was once believe this was due to pollution but is currently believed to be due to the existence of an iron ion that does not easily dissolve in water (per wiki-travel).

Map from a government website: http://www.gep-en.ntpc.gov.tw/econtent/travel/travel.asp

There is much more to see in this area … the attractions around Jinguashan here.

I returned on the same bus to Jinguashi (I didn’t really get off …) and then transferred to a bus towards Taipei Main Station.

I had to go meet a friend for my birthday dinner! ~~~~~~~

my birthday dinner!

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