Marc's Public Blog - Trips to other locations

After our night in Keelung, we went to check a fort that used to be there to defend the city from invadors like the French (that didn't really work out, the French did get in there):

getting our car back from the elevator to head out

map from the french

there isn't much left of the fort, a few stones and cannons

From there, we had a few nice views:

nice temple

We then drove to Juifen, an old mining town with a well known shopping street:

by the time we got there, the weather had turned to fantastic :)

thankfully the shopping street was covered

After doing the shopping street in Jiufen, we went to check out a small gold mining museum where a nice lady gave us a private tour in English explaining how mining was done there (different from the US due to different kinds of rock and Aure):

You need a bigger nail :)

The guide showed us carbide lamps they used as lights in the tunnels. You put calcium carbide in them (a solid), mixed it with water. The reaction gave off acetylene gas which in turn comes out the lamp and you set on fire to create light.

Our guide then showed us how the ore was processed and finally turned into gold by hand. It's quite an involved process from grinding with a wheel, and multiple levels of separation, using weight, than mercury, evaporating the mercury, then silver, removing the silver with nitric acid, and finally getting gold in the end.

traces of gold on top of the sand, due to gravity

the mercury/gold mix is heated up and the mercury condensed back in water to be reused

copper

silver

From there, we went to nearby Jioufen which had a Gold Ecological Park showing more about mining. By the time we got there, it was pouring rain:

the tunnel was very wet and growing all kinds of fungus

The town had a Japanese Shinto gate from the colonial period. There are few left over. We hiked up to check it out, or what was left of the temple:

at least the view from up there wasn't bad since the rain had subsided

From there, we went to check out big statue we could see from a distance:

With that over, I drove in 90mn of bad traffic (rain + sunday night) to get to Jennifer's uncle's house as early as possible so that we could go out for dinner:

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