Jiufen: After the Mines Faded, Cinema Renamed the Mountain Town

30-Second Overview

Long before gold mining, Jiufen was not an "empty city waiting to be discovered." According to local data from the Tourism Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the area was originally engaged in camphor production. The name "Jiufen" is linked to the division of camphor kilns. After gold veins were discovered around 1890, population and capital rapidly concentrated on the slopes, forming a new settlement scale. ¹

Jiufen's second turning point occurred after the mining industry ended. Gold mining officially ceased in Jiufen in 1971, and the Shengping Cinema closed due to the combined pressures of television, videotapes, population loss, and operational deficits. The 1989 release of A City of Blue and Gray brought Jiufen's stairs, mist, and teahouses into the sightlines of film audiences. Subsequent preservation efforts did not restore it to a miners' town; instead, they integrated the cinema, mining archives, teahouse culture, and tourism consumption into a single local narrative. ^{2 3 4 5}

Image: Another Believer, "A-Mei Tea House, Jiufen, 2024," Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original file page. ⁶

Image: Another Believer, "Jiufen, November 27, 2024 - 181," Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original file page. The photo depicts the current night view of Jiufen Old Street and is not used as historical imagery from the mining era. ⁷

A Timeline That Leads Beyond Gold

Jiufen's history is best read through industrial changes rather than the shop signs on today's Old Street. This timeline places "gold mining," "screening," and "preservation" side by side, revealing that Jiufen did not undergo a single transformation, but rather saw different forces take over the same slopes in succession.

This table also reminds us that Jiufen is not simply "mining ends, cinema takes over." The cinema was established before the mining decline, and its closure came after the gold mining peak. Before cinema framed Jiufen as a historical scene, Shengping Cinema itself had already undergone changes as a performance venue, movie theater, and community memory space. ⁵

Before Gold Mining: Camphor Kilns and Place Names

The official attraction page of the Tourism Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications states that before the gold mining boom, Jiufen was engaged in camphor production. The local area had ninety camphor kilns, grouped in sets of ten, leading to the name "Jiufen" (literally "Nine Parts"). This is a local historical narrative on tourism pages and should not be taken as the sole etymological conclusion. However, it at least corrects the simplified notion that "Jiufen only appeared in 1890." ¹

Around 1890, residents discovered gold veins near the Xiaojinkuang area at the Fushan Gong Earth God Temple. The gold rush population rapidly aggregated. Official data estimates that the village once housed three to four thousand households of gold miners. This figure describes a mining settlement that expanded rapidly in a short time, not the long-term fixed population of today's Jiufen. ¹

The National Taiwan University Digital Collections mining history places this turning point within a longer regional context: Alluvial gold was discovered in the Keelung River in 1890, gold mines were found in Jiufen in 1893, and the main ore body was discovered at Ben Shan in Jinguashi in 1894. Gold miners did not suddenly build a city in the mountains; they moved gradually along rivers, ore veins, and transportation lines. ³

In 1896, during the early period of Japanese rule, the Taiwan Mining Regulations were promulgated. Fujita Denzaburo obtained mining rights for Jiufen, while Tanaka Nagahye obtained them for Jinguashi. From this point on, the two adjacent areas were influenced by different management and investment methods. ³

Jiufen's ore veins were mostly in softer sandstone, with gold appearing in leaf-like or branch-like forms within quartz veins. Jinguashi's gold, however, was mostly formed in hard intrusive andesite, which adopted large-scale direct management. Jiufen had once developed a zoning contracting extraction system. It is convenient to refer to both places as "Jin-Jiu" (Gold-Jiufen), but convenient route names should not replace two different industrial histories. ^{3 8}

Slopes Are Not Sets, But Labor Routes

Miners, contractors, shopkeepers, theater troupes, and miners' families all entered the limited slopes. Houses could only stack along the terrain. Stairs connected mine entrances, homes, shops, and cinemas. Streets were first routes for work and life, later becoming sightlines for tourists taking photos. NTU data identifies narrow land, dense population, slope-aligned housing, and mining population aggregation as key factors in the formation of Jiufen's mountain town settlement. ³

This type of settlement is difficult to represent with a single building. Teahouses, cinemas, grocery stores, mine shafts, and dormitories each correspond to different life needs. If we only preserve the most photogenic teahouse facades while ignoring mine shafts, hospitals, schools, transportation, and resident memories, we preserve an exterior, not a settlement.

Image: Another Believer, "Jiufen, November 27, 2024 - 197," Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original file page. The photo depicts the current Old Street and slope alleys and is not used as a historical photo from the mining era. ⁹

The difference between Jiufen and Jinguashi becomes clear here. When the Archives and Records Administration, National Development Council organized Jinguashi data, what remained was not just gold production figures, but also mine shaft maps, hospital outpatient schedules, student dormitory applications, railway timetables, and company articles of association. These documents restore mining to a system of arranging work, medical care, schooling, and commuting. ²

Shengping Cinema: From 543 Seats to Local Cultural Space

Shengping Cinema was not given cultural value only after A City of Blue and Gray was filmed. Ministry of Culture articles note that its predecessor, "Shengping Hall," was completed in 1931. It was a two-story building combining drama and film screening, with brick construction on the first floor and wood on the second, seating 543 spectators. It was first an entertainment facility for the mining settlement, later becoming a preserved historical building. ⁵

The 1950s and 1960s were the cinema's prosperous period. The decline of gold mining, population loss, and changes in the investment environment made operations increasingly difficult. In the 1970s, as the film production industry matured, the cinema once transformed into a movie theater, later influenced by television, videotapes, and new media, finally ending operations due to deficits. This clue is more specific than "old cinemas witness prosperity and decline" because it points out that audiences, media, and industries changed simultaneously. ⁵

After the cinema closed, the building was nearly demolished. Ministry of Culture articles note that 2009 marked a preservation turning point for the locality. In 2010, Shengping Cinema was designated as a memorial building, and a plan for surrounding spatial scene creation was proposed. It was subsequently managed by the Gold Museum, New Taipei City, with the cinema gradually transforming into a cultural display and performance space. ⁵

Between 2010 and 2020, the Gold Museum conducted interviews with Jiufen residents through "Mining Stories: Discovery and Recording," placing local figures' stories into the cinema for screening. It also provided participatory budget plans, allowing locals to propose how the space should be used. This approach changed the viewing relationship of the cinema: tourists no longer just look at an old building, but see who provides the stories and who decides the exhibition content. ⁵

Walking into Shengping Cinema today, one can see old projectors, movie promotional tricycles, posters, ticket windows, and replica grocery stores. These objects are not the complete original state of the mining era, but evidence selected by later curators. Exhibitions allow people to understand history, but also arrange the order of history, so exhibits must still be cross-referenced with resident memories and mining archives. ⁵

Gold Exits, Cinema Enters

Jiufen began to decline after 1957, and gold mining officially ceased in 1971. Mining in Jinguashi continued until the Taiwan Metal Mining Corporation ceased operations in 1987; the exit times for the two places differed. ^{2 3}

After mining ended, the first things to disappear were not houses, but the people the houses originally served. Miners no longer entered and exited daily; the cinema lost its fixed audience; shops lost their fixed customer base; contractors and families gradually left. Jiufen's later "decline" was not a sudden uglification of the landscape, but the breaking of the work networks that supported the landscape.

In the 1980s, the Taiwan New Cinema began to use Jiufen and Jinguashi as story spaces. Wu Nianzhen encouraged friends to film in Jiufen. Films like Days of the Beach, A City of Blue and Gray, and Siu Ma brought the mountain town slopes, miners' hospitals, old houses, and cinemas onto the silver screen. ^{4 10}

Released in 1989, A City of Blue and Gray is set against the backdrop of regime change and the February 28 Incident. Hou Hsiao-hsien used long takes to capture Jiufen's mist, stairs, and houses, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The film did not fully record Jiufen's industrial history; it chose street corners capable of carrying stories and brought those corners before audiences far from Ruifang. ⁴

In an interview with Taiwan Panorama, Wu Nianzhen said that the declining Jiufen was still beautiful, "like a white-haired auntie." He compared later overdevelopment to putting "powder and rouge" on this auntie. Reading these two metaphors together, the discussion is not about rejecting tourism, but whether the content of life remains visible after the local exterior becomes brighter. ¹⁰

The Spirited Away Rumor and Local Imagery

The connection between Jiufen and Spirited Away is one of the most common misplacements in tourism narratives. Many travel texts imagine the red lantern streetscape and bathhouse as filming evidence, but City Studies notes that Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki have both denied Jiufen as the filming location. ⁴

This rumor is worth including in the article not because it is more interesting than the gold mining history, but because it demonstrates how a locality is reassembled by imagery. The real Jiufen has its own slopes, cinemas, and mining timeline, yet audiences may arrive with the imagery of another film in mind. When errors become travel expectations, the locality must expend effort to separate "similarity" from "filming location."

Teahouses and Food: Tourism Sells More Than One Old Street Photo

Jiufen's teahouse culture did not appear after cinema, nor can it be simplified into the three characters "old flavor" (nostalgic taste). Hsiu-Li Han's 2012 research, using in-depth interviews and literature review, analyzed Jiufen's history, food culture, and tourism environment. It pointed out that local cultural industries are constituted by historical landscapes, life memories, and traditional cultural products. Teahouse culture is combined with Jiufen's life scenery and pace. ¹¹

This research also notes that Jiufen Old Street shops formed a commercial association, stabilizing commercial organizations. This indicates that tourism transformation is not a result caused unilaterally by external tourists; local shopkeepers are also building shared commercial spaces. The question is, as the shared brand of the commercial district becomes clearer, whether there is still room for individual residents and non-commercial memories to be seen. ¹¹

Therefore, Jiufen's food deserves to be written as industrial relations, not snack origin legends. Teahouses, desserts, taro balls, grass jelly cakes, and souvenirs can all be part of the local economy, but without reliable shop histories or research sources, we should not create "passed down since ancient times" stories for single foods.

The Conflict Between Preservation and Tourism Has Specific Content

Opened in November 2004, the Gold Museum preserves the Jinguashi mining heritage site based on the concept of an ecological museum. Ministry of Culture data states that the core area is approximately 4.5 hectares. It has restored seven types of ruins, including Japanese-style dormitories, mining offices, cafeterias, and the Crown Prince Guest House, as well as one mine shaft. It continues oral history interviews, cultural asset research, and educational promotion. ¹²

The Ministry of Culture's "Recreating Historical Scenes" plan directly lists the difficulties of Shui-Jin-Jiu (Shifen, Jiufen, Jinguashi): mining pollution remains, landowners and residents have inconsistent imaginations of development, and preservation and revitalization cannot rely solely on fixing buildings. The plan proposes advancing from local needs, community participation, historical space reuse, and enhancing mining value. ¹³

Image: Another Believer, "Jiufen Qingyun Temple, Taiwan, 2024," Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original file page. This is an image of religious architecture in the current settlement; the photo itself is not treated as evidence from the mining era. ¹⁴

A 2024 study in the International Journal of Heritage Studies interviewed 18 residents and 16 tourists, organizing four interconnected themes: memory, collective identity, sense of belonging, and mass tourism. The study also found that residents and tourists have inconsistent understandings of the best cultural landscape. This result indicates that "Jiufen is very commercialized" is still too coarse. The real difference lies in whose segment of life is treated as a landscape, and who bears the daily costs brought by tourism. ¹⁵

Jiufen's Today Problem Is Not Whether It Should Be Seen

Jiufen has been seen many times: Gold miners saw ore veins, miners saw work, cinema audiences saw the screen, film audiences saw historical atmosphere, tourists saw teahouses and mountains/sea, and residents saw transportation, rent, garbage, noise, and livelihoods. None of these sightlines alone can represent Jiufen.

What truly needs to be maintained is the gap between data. The 1890 gold vein discovery, 1931 Shengping Hall, 1971 cessation of mining, 1989 A City of Blue and Gray, 2010 memorial building designation, and today's teahouses and tourism commercial districts cannot be compressed into a smooth "from mine to attraction" story. Each turning point changed who could use this slope and what would be preserved.

If Jiufen's preservation only restores the most photogenic streetscapes, it will lose mining systems, labor, pollution, population loss, and local organizations. If it only treats resident life as tourism material, it will again turn residents into objects of observation. Shengping Cinema's preservation experience shows that local figure interviews, performances, artifacts, and tourist viewing can coexist, but the premise is that exhibition content must explain its sources and allow locals to participate in how the space is used. ^{13 5}

Further Reading

• Museum Island, Ministry of Culture: Wandering the Time Corridor—Jiufen Shengping Cinema's Spatial Play Experiment
• Taiwan Tourism Network, Tourism Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications: Jiufen
• Airiti Library: Culture, Industry, Tourism—Research on Jiufen's Food Tourism Environment
• Wikimedia Commons: A-Mei Tea House, Jiufen, 2024

References