Skip to main content

Pingxi and Shilin


Taiwan has three scenic branch lines, along with the Alishan scenic railway. These are railway lines deemed uneconomic for normal operation which now exist solely for tourist trains. Naturally, I was attracted!

The closest of these, and one of the more scenic, is the Pingxi line. It once served coal mines in the mountains around New Taipei City, but these are all long closed and it has now been converted for scenic operations.

To reach the Pingxi line we first had to catch a train to Ruifang on the Eastern line. The staff at Taipei's Main Station were very helpful, a roaming attendant assisting us with the ticket machine. We also purchased day passes to the Pingxi line from the prepaid ticket counter.

The orange train that pulled up on platform four looked old and a little decrepit on the outside. There was only one door per carriage and a huge crowd of passengers was trying to squeeze out of the narrow exit. At the same time passengers were attempting to board. It's every person for themselves in Taiwan, like on the mainland.


Fortunately, we had prebooked seats, though of course somebody was already sitting in ours. They moved without any trouble, but were left, like many others, standing in the aisles of the express.

We had each bought a small bottle of flavoured milk for our breakfast on the train: chocolate, apple and lemon flavours. Nice.

The first part of the ride, until after Zhongshan station, is underground, then you emerge into what look to be dormitory and industrial areas alongside some river and mountain scenery. The buildings are grimy, yet retain some design on their exteriors. Had we not been familiar with Japan the first impression would have been ugliness, but you learn to look beyond the concrete and tiled walls to see something more.

That's what Taiwan was to our eyes: A dirtier, rougher version of Japan with Chinese touches.



At Badu station we had to give up our seats for an elderly blind man, his wife and grandchild, and join the crowd in the aisle. The helpful attendant had said something about the seats only being booked so far, but the information was all in Chinese, despite the English on the machine, and we had no clue. Fortunately, the next
station was Ruifang.

There we joined the disembarking scrum and squeezed our way down the stairs, following the crowd. Most were probably destined for Juifen, another place I greatly wanted to visit, but it turned out we needed to return to our original platform and wait 45 minutes for a train on the Pingxi line.


When it arrived it was three carriages and everyone was spread out for at least five. The crush on the last carriage of the DMU, and presumably the others, rivaled anything in peak hour Shinjuku. There was literally no standing or seating space left (unless you were in India and we weren't). Worse still, Alex wanted to sleep and B had to put him on her shoulder while I held my heavy daypack in one painful hand. Somehow we managed to swap.



Though it may have been a scenic line I had almost no view of the exterior and certainly no room to take photos when I did. Eventually, at Shifen, many got out and there was some breathing room and a seat for B and Alex, but the train was still crowded. And this was supposed to be low season for tourism! Oh how I longed for the lonely rural lines of Japan.

We stayed until the train reached its terminus in Jingtong where we squeezed out as other travellers returning down the line attempted to squeeze in. There was a narrow "old street" running off from the original wooden Japanese style station. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to enter the old railway shop.





The toilet food of last night wanted to return to its source, but there were only open urinals for the men.

Hanging everywhere were lengths of bamboo on which love messages had been written.

We walked the short length of the old street and purchased lime and konnyaku jelly drink, what (we later discovered) might have been a pigs blood and rice concoction on a stick (discarded: not nice) and chicken, taro and carrot wrapped in a tofu sheet and deep fried. It's local to the town and tastes quite good. Alex demanded, and got, a fried pork sausage.


Then he joined many others and played on the disused railway tracks beneath the decaying concrete coal loaders. I would love to have spent more time exploring the town, but the trains only come roughly every 45 minutes, so we joined the crowd on the return trip.




We skipped the town of Pingxi, for which the line is named and famous for its paper lantern festival, and stayed until Shifen.

The platform at Shifen is far too narrow for the number of passengers, especially when one crowd is trying to get on as another is attempting to exit. It's elbows and bag blocking without any apology or excuse me.

The railway line runs straight through the main street of Shifen. It's another "old street" with stalls selling mostly fried food and trinkets. Once the train is gone the paper lantern vendors setup across the tracks. For a sum you can paint messages hoping for good luck (I saw requests for love, promotions, education and money) on the sides of these big paper balloons. A fire is then lit beneath and they soar off into the sky, destination unknown.



The shop and house facades in Shifen retain a grimy old art deco style clad in ceramic tile or concrete and overlook the river or the railway. A long suspension walking bridge shakily crosses the river, and we crossed and returned as Alex laughed away with the wobbles. Then, after one false start, we set off for the waterfall viewing area.








It was a long, long walk. After the town petered out there were farms and then moss, bamboo and fern clad rocks. We made it to the visitors information office just in time for me to use a squat toilet for the second time in my life. Lucky I had my own tissue paper stashed away, for there was none available inside.



Another suspension bridge leading to nowhere crosses the river. The waterfall viewing area was further down and we had to pay an entrance fee to gain access.



The falls are quite attractive and there are dining and play facilities on the site, which is designed with Chinese iconography.




I don't know why there's no station at the Shifen falls, because the railway line runs right beside the lookout area. On our return to Shifen we followed the tracks until the river, where we crossed over yet another suspension bridge and up past a restaurant. Then it was along a road - no footpath - trusting that this was the right route back.





We knew we were okay when we arrived at the level crossing, much to Alex's excitement. I had filmed a train going through on the way to the waterfall. Back in Shifen we watched a train passing through the centre, then quickly made our way to the platform.



Fortunately, the next train terminated at Shifen before returning, so we managed to snare a seat by pushing through the crowd.

At Ruifang we only had short wait before a local train bound for Taipei and beyond pulled up. No booked seating on this commuter style train, but B got a seat and I stood and snapped photos through the door windows, watching the red ball of the sun set behind the hills.



Back at Taipei's main station we decided to go to the famous Shilin night markets for a street food dinner. The MRT took us to Jiantan station and we joined the mass walking to the lights of the market.


The food stalls are crammed into a couple of narrow streets between clothing shops, with the actual night markets further up. The crowd was just as bad as on the trains, with almost no room to move. We bought a bun, but there was just no chance to look and think about the many interesting foods on offer, so we ate almost nothing.






With both Alex and B starving we eventually stopped in a regular restaurant opposite the food stalls. It sold pork stewed in an unappetising (for me) Chinese medicinal smelling broth, along with thin rice noodles or rice. Alex devoured the noodles, while B took to the pork ribs. I ate nothing, not feeling hungry. With all the walking and crowds my stomach was not feeling hungry.


Giving up on the market, we decided that we preferred the quieter street stalls around the Longshan temple, so headed back to the main station and our hotel. I was in chafed agony and could barely walk.

One the way to the hotel we stopped by a dumpling shop, where Alex gobbled up fried and steamed dumplings meant for me. He likes these more familiar foods.


It's a pity that the crowds spoiled what would otherwise have been very enjoyable experiences. Individually, the Taiwanese have been very friendly, it's just large masses of them that make life difficult. So far my top travel tip for Taiwan would be to come on a weekday!

Photos

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ho Chi Minh to Hoi An

The easy way to get to Hoi An from Ho Chi Minh City is to fly to Danang then go via car for the final leg. Then there's my way. We had to wake at 5.30 am to get ready for a 6.15 departure from the hotel. A hotel car took us the few kilometres to the domestic terminal at the airport, where we checked into our Vietnam Airlines flight to the central Vietnam city of Hue. The airport was nothing flash, but it seemed functional. Alex had sandwiches (refused banh mi) for breakfast, then we went to the gate. Our blue Airbus A321 was parked at a remote stand, which necessitated a packed shuttle bus ride. It was nice to be aboard a full service airline again, even if the service was just a cup of water. We took off over the hazy skies of Ho Chi Minh City and for most of the smooth flight were cruising over a carpet of cloud. We descended over mountains poking their heads through the cloud, across lakes and paddy fields and over the beach. It was lovely scenery.

The Carlingford Line

We close the year and the decade with a local adventure to mark the closure of a railway line. On the January 5, 2020, the Carlingford Line from Clyde will close to be partially replaced by the Parramatta Light Rail. This is Sydney's quietest line, a single track branch for most of its length from the industrial centre of Clyde to the northwestern suburb of Carlingford. According to Wikipedia, power supply and signalling issues mean that only a single four car train can utilise the line at a time. Newer Sydney trains run in fixed eight car configurations. This will be the first and last time I traverse the Carlingford Line in its current configuration. The weather of the day is certainly appropriate for an ending, the brown smoke haze lending an apocalyptic air to proceedings. I drive to Padstow and catch the T8 line to Central, followed by the T1 towards Parramatta and Penrith. The historic homes of the Inner West give way to industrial complexes, rail storage yards and t

A lazy day at the beach

It's 2am and somebody is still setting fireworks off on the beach in front of the hotel. I can't see the explosions as I have the window shuttered, but I can still hear them. I've wanted to have a lazy day and today was the closest I got. I woke up in the night from a very sad dream. Dreams follow crazy paths, but this one resolved itself as so. An entity had been causing disruption of computer systems around the world. It turned out that this entity had emerged from the computer networks and had been struggling to gain access to more computing power so that it could live. The entity had taken on the persona of a woman. The protagonist who had "defeated" the entity discovered that it was alive, spoke to it. Ultimately fell in love with her. But his prior actions would lead to its death. As a gift to her he downloaded his memories so that she could experience life even as she died. I know it sounds like a pulpy sf or technopunk plot, but dreams are about feelings,