Bali Old Street

This guide to Bali Old Street, across the river from Taipei's Tamsui, goes back to the working port that grew here over thousands of years of Indigenous and Chinese settlement. It follows the moment in 1860, after the Second Opium War forced Qing China to open Taiwan to Western trade, when both riverbanks competed to become the region's big international harbor, and the mix of weather and geography that decided which one won. You'll hear what that loss meant for the street's food stalls and daily rhythms in the generations since. Try the local mussels or a-gei as you walk the old dock front.