Jiufen Taiwan

March 9, 2010 in Fashion, Food, Interesting Stuff, My Thots, Photography, Taiwan, Travels | 2 comments

Another must go place. It’s definitely on the touristy side but still worth a visit to get an old town feel. And for fans of “Spirited Away” like myself it was nice to finally visit the location that gave the artist, Hayao Miyazaki, inspiration. The name Jiufen or Nine Portions was derived from the nine families that settled here during the Qing Dynasty. The would go down to the town to order nine portions of whatever they needed and that nickname stuck till today.

The place that everyone visits in Jiufen is the Old Street where all the shopping and food is located. It’s a narrow street with endless choices and lots of people!

We walked till the end of the street for the hilltop view before slowly exploring the dozens of tiny shops. As usual the shops that got my attention most were the food stalls! Choices and more choices!

One of the most famous stalls is Grandma Lai’s Taro Balls. They actually have balls of different flavors like taro, sweet potato, green tea and so on but I liked the taro ones best.

Handmade mochi, tarts and sweets were at every corner and you can get free sampling before you decide to buy some. I bought quite a number of foodstuffs back as well.

Their form of carrot cake… I found it to be rather bland.

Braised meat rice “Lu Rou Fun” with home made fish balls was yummy! The fish-balls were huge yet very bouncy and has a lovely texture.

They even had these meatballs with fish paste fillings! It’s an interesting concept to have meat balls over fish-balls and the taste doesn’t clash either!

Home made noodles. Looks a little like lao shu fen but it’s much thinner and taste slightly different.

Century egg toufu. A cold dish. Taiwan is supposed to be know for their yummy century egg. I’m not a big fan of century eggs as a cold dish… I like them hot in my congee.

My sister’s bunny… not for consumption… =)

Grilled garlic butter cheese escargot and cuttlefish!

My sister with her ice-cream popiah.

Greedy face dad with the mini guava juice! It’s good for digestion but on the sour side though.

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March 10, 2010 at 3:47 pm

Cheryl Poon

Cheryl Poon’s avatar

Jiu Fen….one of my fav town in Taiwan too. Another town that makes you eat from the start of the street till the end and then eat again while walking back to the start. Thank you renzze for bringing back fond memories of jiu fen for me again. I love admiring the photos you’ve taken too such as the last 2nd piece here (a dash of green from the back alley). I just love it.

March 11, 2010 at 3:03 am

Renzze

Renzze’s avatar

Cheryl,

You’ve basically put into a sentence what I took whole post to do! Lol. I think Jiu Fen has even more to offer then that street but I didn’t have time to explore… perhaps next time.