Taiwan Today

Three spur lines take tourists back to the good old days of Pingxi, Neiwan and Jiji.

Although they are known for their scenery and tour-ist attractions, Taiwan’s branch rail lines are in fact a reflection of local industries in days gone by, says Su Chao-hsu, a lifelong railway enthusiast who has written more than 20 rail-related publications. There are three branch lines still in operation in Taiwan: the Pingxi Line in Taipei County, the Neiwan Line in Hsinchu County and the Jiji Line in Nantou County. Each of them grew in prosperity and fell into silence with the rise and decline of their local industries, and now each has been turned into a tourist railway line.

In the late 1910s, coal seams were discovered in Pingxi Township and coal mining flourished from 1920 with the founding of the Taiyang Mining Company, which owned the mining rights to the area. The corporation then established the Pingxi Line in 1921 to transport the coal, dubbed “black gold,” and form a main transportation route to promote the development of the area. The Pingxi Line crosses through Pingxi Township with seven stations including stops in the villages of Shifen, Wanggu, Lingjiao, Pingxi and Jingtong, as well as Sandiaoling and Dahua stations.

During the 1960s, the peak of coal mining in the Pingxi area, there were around 16,000 residents throughout the township. “On traditional Taoist celebrations like the sixth day of the sixth lunar month and the 15th day of the eighth month on the lunar calendar [Mid-Autumn Festival], many people would fill the main street in Shifen Village selling clothes, products for babies and other items. At night, the street was full of the vendors sleeping there,” recalls Yang Lai-xiang, now in her 70s, who has lived in Shifen for more than 40 years.

As cheaper coal started being imported from the mid-1970s and Taiwan’s existing coal mines were mostly exhausted by the 1990s, coal mining came to an end when the last coal pit closed in 2000—the last one in Pingxi Township shut down in Shifen Village in 1997. As shops closed their doors for the last time and many of the residents moved out, the villages became more or less ghost towns.

In recent years, however, with the efforts of the remaining local residents, the area has developed into a tourism destination. Since the establishment of the New Taipei Sky-Lantern Association in 1993 and the Ping Shi Attractive Commercial Area in 2005, Pingxi Township has become known variously as the “township of coal,” “township of waterfalls” and “township of sky lanterns.”

“The role of the Pingxi Line has shifted from transporting coal to promoting local culture as a tourist railway line,” says Huang Yi-ming, the manager of the Coal Mine Museum in Shifen Village. As the place where the popular custom of launching sky lanterns began, now the township sees more than 600,000 holidaymakers every year, according to the Ping Shi Attractive Commercial Area.

Visitors who want to travel the Pingxi Line have to stop at Houtong or Ruifang stations on the main east coast trunk line and transfer to the branch line. An economical way to enjoy a mini-break in the area is to purchase a one-day pass that allows unlimited stops between Ruifang and the final station on the line, Jingtong, at just NT$54 (US$1.60) per adult.

Both Shifen and Jingtong villages spotlight the region’s coal mining heritage. The Coal Mine Museum, established in Shifen Village in the 1990s by the former New Pingsi Coal Company, displays equipment carried by the miners, such as headlamps, helmets and emergency breathing equipment, as well as preserves facilities, such as a public bath used by the miners, coal sorting equipment and windlasses.

Shifen’s two major streets run along both sides of the railway line as local residents moved from the nearby mountains to the immediate area surrounding the village’s railway station after it was built, says Wu Ming-xian, a local guide at the museum. Hence, the railway track through Shifen is lined on both sides with shops and houses.

Tourists who get off at Shifen Station can head straight to the coal museum via a short walk and a tram, a narrow gauge train originally used to transport coal and miners. The locomotives are more than 70 years old and were dubbed “one-eyed monks” because of the single, round window at the front of the engine and the yellow paintwork reminiscent of the color of a monk’s robes. They were the first electric locomotives used in Taiwan and were imported from Japan in 1939. “Many Japanese rail enthusiasts come here especially to see these locomotives,” Wu says. The museum also provides old-fashioned miner’s lunches for those seeking to experience something of the old lifestyle. According to the guide, the lunches had to be salty and always included a large piece of meat to help the workers maintain their energy.

The built environment throughout Pingxi may be another reason the area attracts so many visitors. Resident Zhu Hong, a shop owner who moved to Shifen four months ago, says locals decided to ban the typical development of the villages in the area so as to better conserve the old-time atmosphere of the place. The villages have no traffic lights, 24-hour convenience stores, fast food restaurants or gas stations, for example, which are all common sights in most busy cities. “Local people are aware of preserving their culture of sky lanterns and want to protect it from being destroyed,” Zhu says.

These days, people write their wishes on the sky lanterns and release them hoping for a better life. In the old days, however, the lanterns were used as a safety signal. At that time, Jingtong Village was a wealthy place and a target of attacks by bandits. After an attack, the villagers who had stayed behind would release the lanterns to inform the other villagers that it was safe to return home.

Lighting the lanterns was eventually incorporated into part of a friendly “contest” among local villages. Wu says Shifen and Nanshan villages, separated by the Keelung River, used to compete for the highest number of baby boys born in a year. “We’d tell another village how many baby boys our women had given birth to during the year by releasing the same number of sky lanterns,” says Wu, now in his 30s, describing the use of the sky lanterns in his childhood.

Since sky lanterns have now become the symbol of the village, souvenirs such as mini sky lanterns with blessings written on them and other related products are easily found in the local shops. “Compared to Jingtong, Shifen has more shops selling souvenirs with local characteristics,” says Cherry Chang, a tourist visiting Shifen from Hong Kong, who bought several mini sky lanterns and released a real sky lantern with her friends.

As the main location of coal pits in the Pingxi area, Jingtong Village attracted people from all around the island, according to Kao Wen-lu, a local Jingtong cultural worker. “Of the some 2,800 miners, 250 people came from Xizhi City in Taipei County by foot, crossing the mountains every morning, as well as indigenous people from Hualien and Taitung who moved here.”

The biggest colliery is located right on the hill in front of the station. The Shidi Inclined Pit, dug between 1937 and 1975, was one of the most productive coal mines in Taiwan. As with other coal mining sites, its electricity substation, containers for coal, and windlasses are situated around the pit, as well as five 300-meter-high hills of tailings dug out from the coal pits in the Pingxi area, according to Kao Wen-lu.

Visitors can get a clearer picture of everyday life in those early days through the original buildings that are still standing, such as the dormitories built for senior Japanese officers working for the mining company and shops built for the miners. Other tourist meccas in Jingtong include the Jingtong Palace, formerly known as the Shidi Club, which the Taiyang Mining Company used to receive guests. “The chef here would sometimes make rice balls filled with dried radish slices for the miners when they worked overtime,” Kao says. The site still operates as a restaurant on the second floor of the building.

Many of the buildings on the old street in Jingtong are now in ruins, yet the artistry and high quality materials from which they were made show the prosperity of the village in its heyday. “Miners are beggars during the day and wealthy at night,” says Wu, recalling a saying in Taiwan that describes the hardship of the miners’ work and how easily many of them spent their high salaries.

Kao Wen-lu says his father was a miner in Jingtong for some 49 years starting from the age of 18 until the mine there closed in 1987. “On the day the pits closed, he cried because that was the most familiar place to him,” Kao recalls.

Jingtong Station, one of the last wooden stations in Taiwan, is also a popular site for shooting wedding photographs. The roof of the station, for example, is a beautiful sight as it is carpeted in moss.

The Neiwan Line in Jianshi Township, Hsinchu County tells a different story of local development. During the 1960s, Neiwan Village was the main route to the mountainous regions of Jianshi, which were rich in forestry resources and coal. As with the villages throughout Pingxi Township, however, Neiwan experienced a downturn as industry in the area began to decline in the 1970s.

In 2000, local residents established the Neiwan Image Commercial Area (NICA) to develop the village as a tourist destination, taking advantage of the old railway line and promoting the village’s old main street. The efforts have paid off as the main street is usually jam-packed with visitors on holidays and the number of shops there has jumped from 76 in 2003 to more than 200 in 2008, according to NICA.

NICA’s director-general, Peng Chun-fu, says the ginger lily is one of the local flowers especially associated with Neiwan, and his group is seeking to develop more products made from the plant as a visitor attraction. So far, the delicacies include ginger lily rice dumplings, ginger lily ice cream and ginger lily handmade egg rolls.

Hakka culture is a big attraction for visitors to Neiwan Village. Traveling around the village, sculptures, signs and pictures of popular Hakka comic characters Brother A-san and Big Auntie, drawn by local artist Liu Hsing-ching, are a common sight.

The village mixes the old and the new, with traditional buildings, such as the Neiwan Cinema and the Neiwan Police Station, alongside modern illuminated signboards that now line both sides of the main street. Guidebook author Tony Huang, writing of a visit to Neiwan in 2006, suggests that this newfound prosperity might have come at a price, however. “Nowadays, the old street is packed with hundreds of tourists causing traffic jams on the roads on holidays, far from the quiet village of 30 years ago.”

Following the Zhuoshui River, the Jiji Line crosses Changhua County and Nantou County in central Taiwan, and has seven stations: Ershui, Yuanquan, Zhuoshui, Longquan, Jiji, Shuili and Checheng. Unlike the villages along the Pingxi Line, which focus on sky lanterns and the culture of the area’s mining villages, the stations along the Jiji Line offer a diverse choice of activities and local sights.

Completed in 1922, the Jiji Line was built to support the construction of the Daguan Power Station located in Checheng Village, the final stop on the line. The trains carried machinery and personnel for the project, according to Shi Li-rong, a guide at the Checheng Wood Museum, and when the power station was completed in 1934, Checheng Village suffered a decline. But, in 1959, Sun Hai, the founder of the Chen Chang Corp., took advantage of the railway for transporting logs from the area and brought the village to life again.

“During the 1970s, there were more than 2,000 residents in this small village and half of them worked for Chen Chang,” Shi says. However, increased attention to conservation in Taiwan led the government to introduce a policy in 1985 prohibiting logging in certain areas. The company therefore shut down two years later and abandoned its factory, dormitory and facilities in the village.

Turning Point

As it happened, the 921 Earthquake that struck Taiwan on September 21, 1999 marked another change in the fortunes of the villages on the Jiji Line. “The 921 Earthquake surprisingly became a turning point for Checheng Village,” Shi says. To restore tourism in central Taiwan, the Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area Administration was formally established in 2000 and the creation of a wood museum at Checheng was included as a part of its reconstruction plans. The old factory was carefully rebuilt and transformed into a museum, opening to the public in 2008.

“The restored factory brings back memories of the old days for tourists,” Shi says. The original pond that had been used for log storage has become an eco pond, and the previous staff office is now a tourist information center. The cranes that were used to lift logs, as well as the trams and tracks used to transport the logs, are also on view in the museum. The expansive view of the mountainous area that is a backdrop to the old wooden Checheng Station is another scenic attraction showing the peaceful beauty of this small village.

Ceramics are another local attraction in Nantou County, with many kilns still in operation there, such as Tenshing Kiln in Jiji Village and the “snake kiln” in Shuili. “This place has an abundance of iron-rich clay that contributes to good quality pottery,” says Huang Mei-yan, a guide at the Shuili kiln.

The Shui-Li Snake Kiln Ceramics Cultural Park is home to a wood-fired kiln, some 30 meters long. There are perhaps no more than five such snake kilns, named because of their long narrow shape, still in operation in Taiwan.

“Now, the kiln is only used two or three times a year, because firing it up consumes around 16 tons of wood and it’s much harder to obtain wood these days than before,” Huang explains.

The park exhibits pottery used in daily life in Taiwan in the 1960s, such as ceramic pillows and containers for chopsticks. Visitors can also watch demonstrations by master potters showing how items are made step by step while they work. Each potter has a different job, such as molding the clay, carving, glazing or firing, making every piece a collaboration of all the artists on site, says Wu Yan-da, one of the potters in charge of firing all the park’s pottery.

All the ceramic works at Shuili’s ceramic park are handmade and experienced customers can tell this at first sight, Huang Mei-yan says. Moreover, those fired in the wood-fired kiln have a unique glaze caused by ash from the wood as it sticks to the pots, which modern kilns are incapable of reproducing.

Varied Attractions

The park also has modern kilns, however, which are used to fire pottery made by tourists and also for the fulfillment of big orders, such as cups ordered by the Hotel Royal Chihpen in Taitung County and lotion containers for the Lalu Hotel at nearby Sun Moon Lake. “They often place orders for 100 to 200 items at a time,” Wu Yan-da says of the hotels.

Further along the Jiji Line, Jiji Station marks the start of the area’s “Green Tunnel.” The Green Tunnel is a 4.5-kilometer-long stretch of the county highway that is lined on both sides with camphor trees. At that point, the road also runs parallel to the Jiji railway line. Tourists can rent bikes from many of the shops around Jiji Station and visit the local tourist attractions by cycling. “Cycling is the best way to visit the ‘small corners’ of Jiji Village slowly, and bikers can also ‘chase’ after the trains while cycling,” says Ben Lin, a long-time cyclist.

Restoration works following the 921 Earthquake have helped to bring tourism to the villages along the branch line and have awoken Taiwanese to the beauty of this area, says Chang Xue-lang, founder of the Jiji Railway Culture Association. Even sites that sustained irreparable damage in the quake have become a new kind of tourist attraction, such as Jiji’s Wuchang Temple.

The temple, built in 1923, had been a major center for local people to worship the Xuan-tian god, a popular Taoist deity. After the earthquake, the Jiji Township Office decided to preserve the ruins of the building. “The collapsed temple attracts more than 1,000 visitors on holidays as a memorial of the earthquake,” says Chen Zhao-yu, a resident of Jiji Village. Currently, the villagers are building a duplicate of the temple opposite the original site; the project is expected to take 20 years to complete.

All three of Taiwan’s branch lines that are still in operation, Pingxi, Neiwan and Jiji, as well as the villages they serve, were impacted by the decline of local industries. But each of the lines has transformed itself into a destination for railway tourism, capitalizing on the appeal of nostalgia to promote a new wave of interest in rail tours, rail enthusiast Su Chao-hsu suggests.

“In the old days, trains would stop or slow down when drivers saw people trying to catch up with them,” recalls Kao Wen-lu from Jingtong in Pingxi Township. “That was a time when people could feel a real sense of community.”

Today, travel on the old railway lines is not only for commuting to these small towns and villages, but is also an important part of the trip for many tourists—particularly rail enthusiasts and cyclists, Wu Ming-xian from Shifen Village says. “The old-time atmosphere is what the passengers are seeking, on board and during their visits.”

Write to Vicky Huang at powery18@mail.gio.gov.tw