A bridge to the past in Taiwan: Guanxi, quiet retreat of century-old town houses, tea, and Hakka food
- It’s a place most people pass by, but stop in Guanxi and you’ll be rewarded. There’s a bookstore where you pay for books with other books, and a quirky tea room
- A town built on tea, it has a museum devoted to the drink. To eat, choose from one of the many Hakka restaurants; to sleep, try a room in a Hakka courtyard home
Guanxi Township is easy to miss. A lot of people pass it on the way to the nearby Leofoo Village Theme Park, famous around Taiwan for its zoo and rides, or to the Window on China theme park of miniature-scale Chinese landmarks.
The town of about 30,000 people lacks a railway station, which would make visiting it easier; long-distance buses run erratically; there are no chain hotels; and there is little parking for tour buses. As a result, it has received fewer than 700,000 visitors in the past five years, whereas the nearby historic town of Neiwan, which is served by rail and is more commercial, gets more than two million a year.
Visitors who do reach the town, in the hills of Hsinchu County southwest of the island’s capital city, Taipei, will find quiet, rural scenery, unique local food, unusual types of tea and a museum tour they’d be hard pressed to get anywhere else. Guanxi Township is also notable for its predominantly Hakka population; the Hakka were a nomadic people who settled widely around southern China and Taiwan, and are known for their courtyard homes. The first Hakka reached Taiwan in the 1600s.
Travellers can stay overnight in guest rooms carved out of a traditional courtyard home. There’s a bookshop where you pay for books with other books, or make a small donation.
“The most important thing is to slow down,” says Lu Wen-jun, founder of the five-year-old Shih Dianzi bookstore on the town’s signature Guanxi Old Street, where his neighbours sell coffee and desserts from houses concealed behind brick archways. “At work there’s a lot of pressure. Here you do not need to do anything.