The village of Shifen seems to be a throwback to the times when Taiwan wasn’t an economic powerhouse. I was under the impression that Taiwan is a very modern country but this is a pleasant surprise for me. It seems to be a small town and much of the activity in the village is centered around the railway station itself. You can consider the train station to be the village center. If a village usually has a square then that probably would be the train tracks itself since surprisingly, there is a lot of activity going on the tracks themselves.
Of course every hour or so, people would need to be cleared away from the tracks because a train would be approaching. This is the same train which I took from Ruifang station. It was rather alarming to see how close to the train you can actually get. If you were foolish enough you can probably reach out to the train as it was passing by. That is how narrow the tracks are. Since the tracks are so accessible, there would be people constantly taking photos and selfies here. Combine the tracks with the old style village buildings and you got yourself a winner. I think it actually quite picturesque.
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