Beipu Old Street

The old core of Beipu, Hsinchu, a cluster of narrow streets around Citian Temple and the Jinguangfu Mansion, headquarters of the land reclamation company that pushed the Han Chinese frontier into Saisiyat territory in 1835. Its houses were packed tightly inside a bamboo hedge with four gates for defence, mud brick dwellings to the east of the temple and two-storey shophouses to the west, with Tianshui Hall and the Chiang A-hsin Mansion among them. Tea and nearby coal mines kept the town prosperous until the 1960s but its streets have since turned to tourism, selling Hakka snacks, leicha (擂茶), dried persimmons, and other goods.