A TV, Ken Dow Motor, show last night introduced Jioufen. The show stars two rising comedians, Ken and Dow, who travel around Taiwan on motorcycle. The show is fun, if you understand Chinese, especially modern Chinese. The languages of the two hosts are very different from the language you learn from Chinese textbooks. The show introduced a museum/exhibition hall of over 1,500 clay masks. The hall has dim lights and is pretty creepy because the masks are ghostly. My brother was watching TV with me and said "a few weeks ago, the owner of the clay mask exhibition hall was invited to a talk show, and the owner said he could see the dead, and made portrait of each ghost he sees, and the spirits are now attached to the masks, which means, the hall is haunted by hundreds of ghosts".

Uh....that is CREEPY!!! So there are ghosts on the masks. To my relief, in Chinese culture, the living share the environment with the dead, and shall respect each other. Ghosts only do terrible things to bad people, so if you are not bad, there is no need to be afraid.

Anyway, for those who are not afraid, and appreciate the art of portraits, here is how you can find it:
Address: 7, Sienchi Road, Rueifang Township
Tel: 02-2496-2016

For those who travel around Taiwan with a GPS:
Longitude: 121'50"39
Latitude: 25'06"28
FYI, cars cannot enter the region, but parking is convenient.



I am not a bad person, but I did not dare enter that hall, instead, I went to Jioufen to grab a nice bite of taro
balls. It is a kind of local desert that tastes quite like "peal milk tea", only with larger pearls made of taro, green tea, and yam. Other people visit Joiufen to see teh old buildings. I believe that the streets were built during the Japanese governance or earlier. Joiufen was the hub to transport gold mines in the mountain to Taipei. We took a picture too, on the old street. The prosperity of the town faded, probably because the mines were exhausted, and the town revived when a famous Taiwanese director shot a movie here. I did not see the movie, but I know that the beauty of Jioufen was well described in the film, and the town revived, largely because of tourism. It is a nice place to go, visit the town on week days, if possible, 'cuz it is damn crowded on weekends. Not many people speak English there, but as you know, Taiwanese people are friendly and hospitable. They never mind the language gap. Jioufen is a town in the mountains so there are many stairs.



LEFT:
This street becomes famous because it was a part of the movie. Along the street are many tea houses where visitors can appreciate Taiwanese tea. I may not know much about Taiwanese tea, but these tea houses all have a great view over Taipei Basin, and customers can have a leisure afternoon in the tea houses, if tired by the countless steep stairs. Oh, you will find groups and groups of Japanese tourists here. There is a special bondd between Taiwanese and Japanese people, really, for example, Japanese food and mateiral is always welcome here in Taiwan and considered the prime. And I think Japanese people like to come here to experience a special part of their history.

RIGHT: This is ruin of a deserted theater, and on the wall is the movie I mentioned. The narrow stairs function as some history tunnel that bring people to the past. Everything is so 1930s here!!