Jiufen Old Street

This guide to Jiufen Old Street in Taipei traces how a hillside gold-rush town, packed with houses by 1903 and left silent when its mine closed in 1971, came back from the dead not once but twice. It follows director Hou Hsiao-hsien's 1989 film A City of Sadness up these stairways, then the rumor that later drew crowds to the glowing Amei Teahouse in search of an anime bathhouse. Listen for what the filmmaker himself has said about that connection.