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In Tokugawa Japan (1608-1868), the capital city of Edo had only one licensed pleasure district, Yoshiwara 吉原. The centerpiece of Japan’s “floating world,” Yoshiwara evolved into a purveyor of refined hedonism. Today, this reputation lives on, inspiring everything from exhibits at major cultural institutions to story arcs in hit anime series.

One of the things that characterized the floating world was both its accessibility and its separateness from the capital—although not far from Edo, the district was kept at a physical remove from the rest of the city. As a result of this separation, travel between the two became part of the experience of visiting Yoshiwara. In the process of being transported, visitors to the pleasure quarters could transform themselves, shedding identities, social status, and connections to their mundane reality. Indeed, much as modern casinos are rumored to purposefully eschew both clocks and sunlight, Yoshiwara even used a different unit of time-keeping in an attempt to encourage visitors to linger. In many ways, to go to Yoshiwara was to travel to another world.

Before going on, I should hasten to assure everyone, this is not a blog post about a trip to a red light district. Rather, it is an account of my recent trip to Jiufen 九份, a former mining community on the outskirts of New Taipei City, just along the border with the port town of Keelung 基隆. Rather than the pleasure seekers of Yoshiwara, Jiufen’s first boom time came during the late Qing period and the Japanese era, when government officials realized that the mountains harbored gold. When the mine closed in 1971, the town went into rapid decline.

In 1989, however, Taiwan New Cinema director Hou Hsiao-Hsien 侯孝賢 chose Jiufen as the setting for his groundbreaking City of Sadness 悲情城市, reviving interest in the small mountain enclave. Later, in the early 2000s, Jiufen struck cinematic gold again, when many Japanese viewers were struck by the similarities between the setting of Studio Ghibli’s Oscar-winning anime film Spirited Away and Jiufen’s scenery and architecture.

In the wake of these two films, tourism to the town took off, setting the stage for Jiufen’s latter-day emergence as Insta-ready playground for snap-happy smartphone wielders (including yours truly). Today, the town of Jiufen is known for buildings perched on the edge of cliffs overlooking the ocean, twisting paths that intersect chaotically as they run up and down the mountains, and inns and vendors peddling a kind of old-timey charm to the weekenders who periodically fill the narrow alleys to bursting while searching for the perfect photo op.

Superficially, the lingering glamor of Edo Japan’s most (in)famous red light district could not be further away from Jiufen’s hardscrabble history of self-reinvention. And yet, the journey to Jiufen does afford a certain sense of travelling to a different reality. The only way to Jiufen is via roads winding precipitously around the lushly forested mountains of northern Taiwan. In this case, I was made acutely aware of each twist and turn on the narrow road’s switchbacks, due mainly to our bus driver who, based on his driving style, was presumably a former stunt pilot, whipping us around corners at roughly the speed of sound, all while flirting with one final barrel roll (just for old time’s sake).

Upon arriving in Jiufen, a protracted rainstorm dragged the clouds so low at times that neither the mountain peaks just a few hundred feet above me nor the bay at the foot of the mountain were clearly visible, noticeably adding to the sensation that the town hangs suspended between sky and sea.

Heading to my hotel via the alleys of Jiufen Old Street 九份老街, I was struck by the fact that the pedestrians were not all humans. Rather, one of the first sights that greeted me upon my arrival, weaving its way in and out of the crowd, was a stockily set bruiser of a sausage-dog clutching an actual sausage in its mouth. With a grey-and-white spotted torso, black and white socks, and a disorderly mop of russet hair atop its head, this canine connoisseur of kielbasa could very easily have inspired another Studio Ghibli dog, and immediately accentuated the sense of being in a place that operates by slightly different rules from Taipei.

But perhaps the most dreamily disorienting experience of my arrival in Jiufen was a second dog who took it upon himself to walk me most of the way to my hotel. As I meandered, slightly lost, along a path up the mountain from Jiufen Old Street, a beagle-ish pooch sleeping on a bag of soil looked at me, yawned, stood up, and yawned again before falling in alongside me. As I stopped at an intersection to re-orient myself, the dog finally got tired of waiting for me and, apparently knowing where I was heading better than I, struck out in the direction of my hotel. We repeated this routine a couple more times before my four-footed pathfinder finally vanished up the stairs of another house within a few hundred feet of my destination, never to be seen again.

Despite the charm of my heaven-sent guide dog, I was not in Jiufen solely to enjoy canine companionship. Rather, I had real research reasons for coming here. Specifically, as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the amorphous idea of “national identity,” Jiufen was like academic catnip. In many ways, this small town’s embrace of an identity rooted simultaneously in the contradictory forces of Taiwan’s arthouse cinema, global anime blockbusters, and social media likes condenses many of the competing elements of modern Taiwanese identity into an intensely concentrated space. By bringing these disparate elements of identity into close proximity with one another, Jiufen offers an opportunity to meditate upon some of the thornier issues that are inescapable in my line of work.

If all of this doesn’t sound too onerous (or if you just want to look at some pretty pictures), please read on!

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The truth about my trip to Jiufen is that I came here to see what I might find out about Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s City of Sadness. Although I don’t plan to talk about this movie in my dissertation, I will be talking about a related movie by the same director. More importantly, as the first movie to portray the brutality of the 2/28 Massacre that kicked off Taiwan’s White Terror, this is a key document in the popular imagining of Taiwan’s fraught political history.

There are many things to admire about this movie—the plot, the acting, and the cinematography are all first rate. Indeed, I think that everybody should be devastated by this film at least once. Sonically, the film is also fascinating. On the one hand, City of Sadness is characterized by a relatively barebones soundscape that adds to the film’s quiet, brooding atmosphere. On the other hand, the film’s economy of aural means serves to highlight sonic events like radio broadcasts under Japanese rule and the boisterous singing of young intellectuals celebrating the “return” of Taiwan to KMT-led China in the brief moment of euphoria between the end of World War II and the start of the White Terror.

Although exhibitions on films rarely focus on soundtracks, I nevertheless thought that there was an outside chance that exhibits in Jiufen might touch on the sound world of City of Sadness. Barring that, I hoped to come across some local details about the production process. Unfortunately, this is not quite how this research trip played out.

Before this trip, I knew that many establishments in Jiufen celebrate City of Sadness, taking pride from the town’s involvement in one of the most iconic Taiwanese movies of the post-War era. Thus, it wasn’t a surprise when I saw that the Japanese-era theater at the center of town featured numerous displays related to Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s movie, or when I passed advertisements for City of Sadness walking tours. On the other hand, I hadn’t anticipated the way references to the film emerge in entirely unlikely settings, such as this teahouse menu.

Ultimately, this trip to Jiufen became mostly about fangirling my way through town, taking pleasure in recognizing the movie’s buildings and settings, and trying to sift through the town’s touristic, carnivalesque bustle for traces of the somber atmosphere that so characterizes Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s first masterwork (a task which, given the constant rain, was surprisingly achievable). My recourse to these oblique kinds of engagements with the film is due to the fact that, despite the very clear local pride, the town’s relationship to the film seems to be relatively superficial. Restaurants and businesses crowbar references to the film into their offerings, whether or not a connection is ready at hand, a nod towards a film that everyone knows, but that few young people have actually seen.

I’ll say a bit more on this last point a little later. But first, a little bit on Jiufen’s second, arguably more marketable filmic lookalike.

While I was in Jiufen hoping to learn more about a rather depressing arthouse film, most people seemed to be there for the far more upbeat reason of taking photos of the Spirited Away scenery.

If the legacy Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s City of Sadness is a rather somber vision of Jiufen’s past, Spirited Away’s influence is of a far merrier sort. From the photo ops of steep, lantern-lit alleys to the food vendors artfully presenting their wares in ways that could easily serve as anime food models, many of Jiufen’s day-trippers come to enjoy a taste of the fantasy world of Sprited Away. Meanwhile, coffee shops and knick-knack shops chock-a-block with Studio Ghibli merchandise such as No-Face figurines, pillows, backpacks, and even No-Face-branded tourist maps—not to mention a solid contingent of Totoro figurines, because why not?—are more than happy to comply/provide/pander, depending on your point of view.

At the heart of this tourist industry is the massive Amei Teahouse 阿妹茶樓, a Taiwanese teahouse in a Japanese-style building halfway down Jiufen Old Street’s main path. With its multiple wings, its many tiers of upturned eaves, and its seemingly precarious grip on the mountainside, Amei Teahouse looks every bit like the bathhouse setting for Spirited Away. Inside, visitors can enjoy a variety of Taiwan teas, sweets, and (theoretically) spectacular views of the harbor. On my visit, I was seated on the open-air upper floor, but the fogged-over plastic coverings that were drawn low to protect customers from the wind and rain blocked what little nighttime view there might have been. One server explained that, on clear nights, the curtains would be raised and the harbor lights would remain lit. Any serious hopes of a better view the following day were dashed, however, when she casually added, “It’ll rain all winter.”

Studio Ghibli is truly everywhere in this town: from souvenir shops and restaurants to tourist products produced by the city government and the clothes and accessories worn by out-of-towners, Studio Ghibli characters and references are inescapable. And yet, it’s worth noting that Studio Ghibli denies the connection between the town and the movie. In fact, director Hayao Miyazaki swears that he’s never been to Jiufen.

Like so many others, I am undeterred by these protestations. Spirited Away takes place in a fantasy world, but the artists who animated it were clearly inspired by real-world archetypes from somewhere. Lacking any concrete statements about direct inspiration for the film’s scenery, Jiufen is as good a place as any to experience a bit of Studio Ghibli magic. Add in the fact that the parallel world of Jiufen is just a short bus ride from the mundane hustle and bustle of Taipei, and it’s no wonder that tourists are willing to overlook Studio Ghibli’s buzzkill protestations.

In Jiufen, the arthouse triumphs of City of Sadness and the dubious links with Spirited Away converge improbably in the economic engine of this small mountain enclave: tourism. And it’s no wonder that Jiufen’s star continues to rise. The town seems to have been custom-built for a social media world, decades before Instagram was even a glimmer in a coder’s eye.

Walking through town, there certainly seems to be a genuine enthusiasm for works like City of Sadness and Spirited Away. Yet they are ultimately part of the substrate of commercialism that keeps this community going. Studio Ghibli denies connections to Jiufen, but businesses, restaurants, and even city-produced tourism materials nevertheless encourage the association. Likewise, City of Sadness is omnipresent in the town, but when I asked at the local theater if they ever screen the film, the docent regretfully explained that they haven’t been able to get copyright permissions. Thus, their City of Sadness attractions are limited to the ephemera displayed along the walls of the building.

Similarly, if you look a little more closely at the knick-knacks on offer in the many tourist shops, it quickly becomes apparent that Jiufen is willing to sell you any experience they plausibly (or even implausibly) can. You’re an arthouse film afficionado? Have this City of Sadness-branded tea! You’re a Studio Ghibli fan? Go on this walking tour with a map featuring No-Face! You’re a foreigner with zero knowledge of or interest in Taiwanese history? Please buy some postcards of Chiang Kai-Shek, or Mao Zedong, or Taiwanese school children speaking Mandarin during the government campaign to suppress local dialects and culture, or Bruce Lee emitting a slightly discomfiting “Whaaaaa!”, or even some creepy Japanese porcelain dolls!

The point is, if you come to Jiufen to experience one of the markers of contemporary Taiwanese intellectual culture, you can find it. If you come to experience a beloved symbol of transnational Asian culture, you can. And if all you want in Jiufen is to experience a kind of generic Asian-ish culture, well, there are plenty of vendors who will sell you that as well.

This conundrum is where Jiufen intersects most with my research. You see, on the one hand, Jiufen aggressively markets itself as “old Taiwan,” “traditional Taiwan,” “the real Taiwan you’ll never see in the big city.” And in some ways, it most certainly is. The narrow twisting alleyways, the centrality of the night market, the way the densely forested mountains plunge precipitously into the ocean, even the mishmash of traditional Japanese, Qing-era Taiwanese, and and drably contemporary concrete architecture is characteristic of Taiwan in its own way.

But in another way, this is a town whose economic fortunes are predicated on likes, on retweets, on clicks, on views. The photographic impulse of visitors to the town is constantly on display in the sheer volume of high-end camera rigs, GoPros, and individuals blithely blocking the narrow alleyways while friends, lovers, or partners take a photograph or twenty, all in hopes of capturing the perfect Jiufen shot.

And where economic road hits entrepreneurial rubber, it turns out that most anything can be marketed as “the real Taiwan.” This is where researchers like myself can really reach an impasse. For skeptics, the questions about nationalism and national identity that motivate me are too amorphous, too dismissive of individual agency to really be of use. “You talk about crafting national identity, but who is doing the crafting?”—or so the refrain goes.

And yet, some images, ideas, and symbols call certain nations, communities, or identities to mind: a banjo and a ten-gallon hat might bring to mind a kind of Old West Americana; a torii gate and Mount Fuji are hard to associate with anywhere but Japan; and an alphorn and a brown cow call do, in fact, evoke Switzerland.

Thus, rather than despair, I take places like Jiufen as a microcosm of the complexities of contemporary Taiwanese identity, and all the latent possibilities those complexities imply. For some people, Taiwan is a modern, high-tech, cosmopolitan society that celebrates diversity and democratic ideals. For others, Taiwan is essentially the Han political complement to Mainland China. And for yet others, high-minded questions of identity are less pressing than capturing the perfect selfie during a brief break in the rain.

When I talk about the “contest” over nationalism and national identity, I’m talking in part about the friction that emerges between these loosely affiliated groups and their poorly articulated, inchoate attitudes towards nation and national identity. Thus, I rarely get down to the level of individual politics, focusing instead on the macro-level polity that, despite the inevitability of internal tensions, still imagines itself as a single community. From street food and traditional teahouses to handmade bric-a-brac and, yes, even a postcard of Mao rubbing shoulders with Chiang Kai-Shek and Bruce Lee, spaces like Jiufen collect a range of mutually exclusive assumptions about national identity and put them on display in one place, all under the branding device of “the real Taiwan.”

This kind of rationale won’t mollify everyone, but that’s ok. I’m happy to use the time waiting for the perfect selfie-op to keep thinking through these problems without bothering anyone else. In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll probably be back at Jiufen Old Street, somewhere near the food stall with the spicy fish ball skewers.

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