Shifen Old Street
Railway village street where shops line live tracks and sky lanterns rise with written wishes.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Shifen Old Street outside Taipei follows the coal railway Japanese colonial administrators laid through the Pingxi Valley in 1918, and the mining settlement that grew up beside the tracks until the mines closed in 1971. It also traces the sky lantern tradition back to mid-1800s bandit raids, when villagers hiding in the hills used floating lanterns as an all-clear signal to call each other home. Listen for how that same beam of light later became something people wrote their own wishes on. Keep an ear out for the train horn as you write yours.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Jiufen Old Street
Hillside old street of stone stairways, red lanterns and teahouses built on a nineteenth-century gold rush.
Shifen Waterfall
Broad curtain-style cascade on a river bend, twenty meters high and forty meters wide, ringed by mining-era rail and hiking trails.
Xinbeitou Historic Station
Restored wooden Japanese-era railway station, dismantled and later brought back to its original neighborhood.
Songshan Cultural and Creative Park
Former tobacco factory village of dormitories, a nursery and bathhouses, now creative studios and galleries.
Bopiliao Historical Block
Qing-era shophouse row frozen from redevelopment for decades by a cancelled school plan.
44 South Military Village
Low tiled row houses from a nineteen forties refugee settlement, preserved beside skyscrapers.