GUANXI (關西)

Exploring the Old Hakka Town of Guanxi

In a slight departure from the usual fare featured here, this post doesn’t recount a walk, it recounts the combined discoveries of several pleasant visits to the peaceful town of Guanxi. I passed through here a couple of times over the course of walking and writing about the Raknus Selu Trail, but specific visit that prompted me to create this was a more recent visit with my mother-in-law. In the past, she has accompanied us on a few easy walks, but it’s getting harder to convince her to move unless there’s a restaurant involved, so I’ve started seeking out places like Guanxi where we can have a little drink, then a wander, see some sights, and have some food.

This kind of place is so rarely featured in the usual line-ups of tourist spots, but it’s every bit as worthy of your time — in fact, in the absence of touristification, you might say it is even more worthy of your time than some of the more commercialised locations. If you want to experience “authentic” local culture, somewhere like Guanxi is probably the most authentic experience you’ll get outside of a shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon, a residential street at rubbish truck time, or a KTV place on the evening before a typhoon day.

If you hit up all the sights mentioned below, you’ll end up walking quite a lot, but you can also choose to stick to the core of the town and just have a gentle amble up and down the river bank — either way, a day trip to Guanxi is a rewarding way to spend your time.

Distance: It’s up to you, covering all the in-town sights mentioned below would probably involve walking a kilometre and a bit. If you extend your ambles to include some of the further afield spots, it’ll be a few kilometres.

Time: At a minimum, I’d suggest a half-day visit. An ideal timing would be to come late morning for coffee and snacks, wander around a bit and make yourself hungry for dinner.

Bathroom facilities: The only public toilets I found were the ones belonging to Taihe Temple.

Route type: Pick-your-own adventure.

Jump to the bottom of this post for a map of the town showing all the places mentioned.

To modern sensibilities, the rustic red arches and simple brickwork of Guanxi Old Street might look a little quaint and backwoodsy. But the very same features which make it seem countrified now, are exactly what marks it out as being a bustling trading town of the past. As the Indigenous people who first lived here can attest, Guanxi was, in fact, an ideal place to settle in years gone by. It had a traversable river which was ideal for forging trade links. The waters were full of fish, the land was good for farming, and the town was surrounded by hilly forests that were teeming with wildlife and home to numerous lucrative camphor trees. This bounty was later reflected in the name chosen for the town by its Hakka inhabitants – their name for the place was “鹹菜甕” aka “Pickle Urn”. Hakka folk of the era were consummate picklers, and to them, enjoying the area’s abundant food resources was almost as easy as taking pickles from a jar. Later, the Japanese authorities would change the name to Guanxi – the Japanese pronunciation for “pickles” being somewhat similar to “Guanxi”.

Walking around town, there are a couple of spots that caught our interest. Early on in the day, a healthy morning market operates around the junction of Zhongyi and Datong Roads and nearby, you’ll find Guanxi Old Street. Wandering down the old street, we passed a store selling farming equipment and another selling all kinds of seedlings. Further down, when you start to be able to make out the distant hills, there is a secondhand bookshop and some kind of community workshop where a leaf-printing workshop was underway.

On a smaller street that runs parallel to and behind the old street, you can see a living relic in the form of a clothes washing pool. This facility is still very much used by village elders (despite the environmental problems involved with letting soap get into the waterway).

Scattered throughout the town there are other remnants of times gone by. If you walk through the covered portion of the market, you can see the wooden-doored facade of the old Guanxi Diyi Theater (關西第一戲院). It opened in the 1940s and was in service until the early 1980s, but nowadays, it’s used for storage. It is closed to the public, but you can still see some of the old hand-painted film posters slowly greying into oblivion. Among them are posters for Peking operas (How Third Madam Educated Her Son/三娘教子), Westerns (流野大鏢客, which is translated on the poster as Red Dead Redemption, but which shows up online as A Fistful of Dollars — explanation later), and martial arts movies (A Touch of Zen/俠女). Despite their aged appearance, these posters are not contemporaries of the theatre itself — they were painted sometime between 2014 and 2016 as part of efforts by Guanxi’s Community Development Association, which is how errors like the Red Dead movie name came about.

Elsewhere, the 1950s facade of the Sacred Heart Catholic church provides an interesting contrast to the more stereotypical local red brick architecture and if you reach the edge of the buildings, you can enjoy green vistas full of farmland and hills. If you visit in April or May, those hills should be painted white with copious amounts of tung blossom.

In addition to its sightseeing spots, Guanxi has a number of cute coffee shops in which to while away an afternoon. One particularly charming store is 汪汪來我家實驗生活2號店 (it doesn’t appear to have an English name). Seating can be found in the second-floor tatami loft, on a balcony overlooking the old street, and scattered throughout the artfully scruffy garden.

Another option is Pusuo Coffee Store, which has recently expanded from its original spot beside Dong’an Old Bridge to occupy the renovated Japanese-era police dormitories. The new venue is styled in simple Japanese fashion, and guests must remove their shoes to enter. The food and drinks are similarly understatedly elegant. They’re best known for their puddings (which we didn’t try), but the pistachio dacquoise we had was divine.

Taking a stroll along the banks of the Niulan River (牛欄河) seems to be one of the most popular activities for people visiting Guanxi. Broad paths run along both river banks and bridges span the water at several points, making it easy for you to start and finish according to the energy levels of your group. We started at Guanxi Bridge, near the southern edge of the town and wandered under the arches of Dong’an Bridge and crossed back over a pedestrian bridge to head into town. If you wanted to, I think you could walk a little further and double back after reaching the towering concrete form of National Freeway No. 3.

The original Dong’an Bridge was built in 1933 by the Japanese authorities and has stood the test of time well. But in 2003, a second structure was built right next to it in order to accommodate the increased flow of traffic to the town.

From the raised land to either side of the river, you can enjoy views of Guanxi’s gentle rural scenery and try to identify all of the greens growing in residents’ allotments.

Further afield, there are more sights to be enjoyed. If you visit on a sunny winter day, you’ll likely see mustard greens (a popular Hakka vegetable) laid out to dry on almost any available surface. Fields of ripening rice green, then yellow, then reflect the sky in cycles, and the allotments are fed with water from elegantly jerry-rigged water wheels.

In the agricultural lands to the southwest of the town, you can find Luowu Academy (羅屋書院). Actually, Luowu Academy is a recent name that came from the fact that it was funded and constructed by diverse members of the local Luo family as a place for the wider Luo clan to gather and promote education. The area’s earlier residents called it by the far more sensible (if a little wordy) name of “That New House Under the Big Tree Beside the River” (河背大樹下新屋). These days, it is a holiday let.

When travelling with older generations in Taiwan, a trip to the nearest temple is pretty much obligatory (my own parents compare it to filling the niche visiting a garden centre fills in British culture).

Guanxi Taihe Temple (關西太和宮) is wedged somewhat wonkily in amongst the surrounding buildings. It also goes by the name Sanjie Temple and is dedicated to a triumvirate of deities known as the Officials of Earth, Heaven and Water. The temple has existed since 1812, although it has only occupied its current position since the time of Japanese occupation. Inside it feels oddly spacious compared to many Taipei temples, and when we visited, the air was so thick with incense that shafts of light cut through it like headlights through fog.

Food-wise, a trip to Guanxi offers much in the way of snacking choices (although much less as a vegetarian). The town is full of restaurants selling hearty Hakka staples — lots of flat noodles, mochi and braised meats. If this sounds like your bag, there are authentic stores on every corner. For vegetarians, there’s pretty much just a single store where the whole menu is veggie. I’d suggest getting the savoury tangyuan soup, since this is a dish you’ll rarely come across in vegetarian establishments. Of course, there are also countless stalls offering the usual: stinky tofu, scallion pancakes, egg cakes, etc.

One treat you can’t miss is all the mesona products. Mesona tea (仙草茶), often just translated as herbal tea, is a popular drink, especially among the older generations. It can be served cold or hot, sweetened or plain, and since Japanese times, Guanxi has been Taiwan’s largest producer of the plant it is made from. The town is home to lots of stalls selling various mesona desserts: herbal jelly, herbal noodles, sweet herbal soup. We got ours warm from this store, which has three options: sweetened, unsweetened, and sweetened with stevia. We had the stevia version, which hit the spot nicely.

How to get to Guanxi

Google Maps address: If you’re coming by car or scooter, there is roadside parking scattered throughout the town, but if you come on a weekend, you’ll likely have to park in the main car park.

Public transport: The 1820 or 1820A bus service leaving Taipei Bus Station bound for Leofoo Village will take you directly to Guanxi. At the time of writing, buses leave from the fourth floor every 30 minutes. The journey takes about 80 minutes and costs about $115.

Further reading: The people at Taiwan Everything/Travel in Taiwan Magazine has a great article about Guanxi.

Nearby trails: The Raknus Selu Trail passes through Guanxi. We visited on day two, day three, and then an alternative day three. And if you like exploring Hakka towns, you might enjoy wandering around nearby Xinpu or exploring Shiguang Historic Trail.