26th August
One of my free days, I wanted to use to do a day trip to Jifuen as I am a huge Ghibli
movie fan, and this town specifically inspired the setting of “Spirited Away” and it is also
known as a tourist hotspot. Therefore, I wanted to use this day to visit the town, and my
plan is to have an Interview at the Jiufen Visitor Center as I had anyways planned to stop by there. I want to find out if there is also a problem here in Taiwan which is similar to the overtourism problem in Kyoto. Where they, as I have mentioned, had to close a
certain district because the mass of tourists was impacting the life of the locals to
much.
I hope to see a difference in the approach as well as in the mindset.
My prediction would be that, firstly they don’t have the same problem as I imagine that
the locals as I’ve learned so far would be more direct. Adding to this I think that the city
of Jifuen isn’t as easily accessible as it is located on a mountain therefore the flow of
tourists can be controlled better with the frequency of public transportation.
Interview at Jiufen Visitor Center
Conclusion & Reflection
I have to say that I was surprised by the outcome of the Interview, even though I wasn’t
able to go as in depth as I would’ve wished I am still happy with my result. To learn that
Jiufen works closely with the local government to manage the flows of tourism makes
perfect sense to me. The same goes for the layout of the town as I can say after
exploring it, there is a main path which leads along all the shops and “photo- spots”.
Which most tourists actually follow along without straying off. I on the other hand went
to explore a bit and I realized that in my eyes, if the flow of tourism would rise even
higher, that these narrow streets which go along the houses of the locals could also turn
into a problem for managing the number of visitors. These narrow alleys could get
crowded really fast and adding to this they are quite confusing. But this is just my
opinion and as it seems now exploring Jiufen is really fun even if you only stick to the
main road.
What also was nice to hear is that the representative also shared a similar opinion when
it came to the way of communication and that the Taiwanese people really tend to be
more direct compared to the Japanese. But the sense of community is similar like in
Japan, and I found that the example of every shop setting up a trash can to distribute the work evenly was quite heartwarming. Even though I might have discovered a few shops who didn’t do this ;-).
