Yesterday, Luci, Rory, and I took a bus to Jiufen to see a teahouse that legend has as the inspiration for Hayao Miyazaki's anime masterpiece, Spirited Away. Jiufen is an old mining town up in the mountains north of Taipei. There was a direct bus from outside our hotel to the old street that has become quite a tourist attraction. (Mountain roads + bus = Merry staying at the hotel) Most people go to see the winding streets full of shops and restaurants, very few to see the teahouse we were looking for. We entered the street and went straight to the teahouse and then decided to walk around.
Another draw is viewing the sun setting behind the mountains that hug the shoreline. After we returned to the main road, we decided to view the sunset from back at the teahouse but, to do so, we had to contend with the crowd that was going to view it farther down the street. Some geniuses had decided that this extremely crowded situation was the perfect time to make their deliveries. Two delivery vehicles about 100 feet apart, blocked almost the entire street allowing only a single file of people on each side to pass. The people coming down (and up) the street had no idea what the problem was, so more people kept piling in. I have never been in such a mass of humanity and, surprisingly, nobody got angry, there was very little pushing, no angry voices, just a ssslllooooowwww, hot, sweaty shuffle forward. To get back to the teahouse there is a "secret" tunnel that bypasses part of the road. I'm not sure how Luci knew about it but it seemed no one else did. After about 20 minutes in the crowd we turned right and entered this cramped empty tunnel and about 50 feet later emerged at the back door to the teahouse..... we missed the sunset.
I guess the teahouse could have been an inspiration for Spirited Away. It was hard to tell from the angle that I saw it or from inside. We had tea, poured in a "tea ceremony" that I didn't really understand; no explanation - not that an explanation in Mandarin would have been helpful..... and I didn't realize it was a "ceremony" until after the fact. After tea, we joined a surprisingly orderly queue for the bus back to Taipei where I probably offended three Japanese women by saying "Xiexie" (thank you) not realizing they were Japanese. I did make some amends by correcting myself to "aragato" - thanks to that Styx hit, "Mr. Roboto", for my knowledge of Japanese, all those monster movies and Ultraman episodes were no help.
I've been ignoring the big elephant in the room.... how are we going to get to Hong Kong on Thursday? The protests at the airport have me worried, not just for our arrival on Thursday afternoon but also for our departure on Monday to home. Check back Thursday night or Friday morning to see how the first half plays out!
As always, thanks for reading!
As always, thanks for reading!