She was raised in a tiny gold-mining town in Taiwan. Now it's become a tourist trap — and she's fighting for the soul of the place.

16.08.2024 - 01:00 / insider.com

"Sorry, but I just work here, I don't live here," said a salesperson as I made my way to a shop in a tiny mountain town in Taiwan in late June.

It's a common refrain in Jiufen, just an hour's drive from the Taiwanese capital of Taipei.

I looked intently at my Google Maps app before stepping into a small opening between two shops. It led me down a flight of stairs and snaked past several homes before hitting a narrow street.

I found my interview location quickly, mostly because Jiufen is so small that it's hard to get really lost.

It's also precisely because Jiufen is so small that the millions of tourists — primarily daytrippers — making their way through its tiny alleyways each year overwhelm the 1,600 residents living here. In 2023, the tourist zone where Jiufen is located welcomed nearly 4 million visitors.

Most would be headed for Jiufen, a historic gold-mining town known for its striking likeness to the set of Oscar-winning Japanese animation "Spirited Away."

Mickey Tseng, 36, paused and searched for her words when I asked her what she thought about the changes in the quiet mountain town where she grew up with her grandparents. She, like many others who hail from Jiufen, spent her childhood chasing after frogs, cooking sweet potatoes in the mud, and frolicking by the rivers.

"I got really angry with how this place became," Tseng told me. "I looked at the crowds and asked why they didn't think to pay attention to culture and heritage."

It's not hard to see Jiufen's allure, especially at dusk, when red lanterns cast a glow on old shopfronts and teahouses that seem to have stood still in time. Or after a shower liftsto leave a mist that stretches into the sea.

But, like tourist hot spots from Venice and Barcelona to Kyoto, Jiufen is now more about vibes than history. Reviews throw up predictable descriptions: magical, crowded, tourist trap.

Visitors to the town typically head to Jiufen Old Street, a narrow winding street with shops on both sides hawking anything from tea and Taiwanese snacks to generic tourist junk.

Many travelers also duck into the teahouses located in and around the street.

Residents — some of whom have lived in the area for generations — try to avoid being around Jiufen Old Street during the day, Tseng said. There's nothing they could possibly want from here.

"The shops in the old street used to cater to residents' daily needs like groceries, food, clothes, and shoes but as the number of residents dwindled, they all closed one by one," said Tseng, referring to scenes from a Jiufen whose glory days were already over when she was born.

Now, the shops in town are mostly geared toward tourists. Many residents make their way down the mountain for their grocery runs. The elderly wait