Although I've visited Taiwan many times, I'd never been to Jioufen - a short distance from Taipei - until earlier this month. Popular with tourists, especially those from Hong Kong, it was a sleepy town when director Hou Hsiao-hsien chose it as the location for his film , which won a host of international awards after its 1989 release.

The film's success brought visitors to Jioufen, however, and the former gold-mining town - which boasts breathtaking views of the East China Sea that can be enjoyed from many a teahouse - has become a tourist trap of sorts.

Jioufen's carnival-like atmosphere today contrasts starkly with the film's tragic story - a retelling of the 228 Incident, an event indelibly printed on the Taiwanese psyche. What began as a localised riot in Taipei over contraband cigarettes grew, on February 28, 1947, into an island-wide armed conflict, descending into a battle between "mainlanders", the recently arrived ruling class made up of Kuomintang cadres and soldiers, and "Taiwanese", the resident Chinese population whose forebears had immigrated to the island much earlier. The former had the upper hand - and more ammunition - and countless Taiwanese were massacred. The actual number of casualties remains unknown.