A half-day trip to Jiufen 九份半日遊
Friday, December 07, 2007

Today, we went to Jiufen 九份 for a half-day trip...
How dare were we doing that since our PI is not available... Haha... Actually all PIs in IMB are not available since Wednesday as they are in Hualien for the IMB Annual Retreat. That would be their research progress session, everyone was busy and tension since last week.

Pam drove us there and five of us arrived at Jiufen around 2 o'clock. It was crowded even though the weather in Jiufen was cold and rainy today.

Some snap shots of Jiufen old street 九份老街.

We didn't eat this, just take pictures as it looked delicious. ^^

We had our lunch there... 紅糟肉圓. The taste is good, they said this dish should be originated from Changhua 彰化, a bit different to those meat ball 肉丸 i had in Taipei... The filling is like char-siew 叉燒 (red pork), but i don't like the starchy coat...

Remember the award-winning cartoon "Spirited Away 千と千尋の神隠し" by Ghibli's Studio, Hayao Miyazaki got his inpiration from here many years ago. The buildings and surrounding in the cartoon looked similar to Jiufen. Very Japanese style of architectures everywhere.

We also tried "Ah-Lan flour cake, yam cake" 阿蘭的草仔粿, 芋粿 (aiya, i don't know how to translate la...). It was very nice!

The yam dessert 芋圓 is a must-have dish when you visited Jiufen. We had the yam desert while looking at the beautiful scenery of Jiufen and North-East Taiwan.