Beipu

Beipu was settled in the 1830s by Hakka farmers pushing into the hills, and the family that led the settlement built the compound that still dominates it: Jinguangfu, a walled residence of courtyards and tiled roofs, now a designated national monument. Around it are a handful of lanes, an ancestral hall, the Citian Temple with its square in front, and Tianshui Hall, another walled house of the same period. The town is small enough to walk in an hour. What keeps people longer is leicha, the Hakka ground tea: a bowl of tea leaves, sesame, peanuts and grains that you grind yourself with a long wooden pestle until it turns to paste, then thin with hot water and drink with puffed rice.

What you actually see

• Jinguangfu - the walled family compound at the centre of the town.
• Citian Temple - the temple and open square that the old lanes run into.
• Tianshui Hall - a second courtyard residence from the settlement period.
• Grinding leicha - working tea, seeds and nuts to a paste with a wooden pestle.

When to go

October to April for cooler, drier walking, with persimmons drying on racks in the villages nearby through the autumn. Weekends bring day trippers from Hsinchu and the leicha places fill up, but the town is never overwhelmed. Parts of the historic compounds remain in private use, so interior access is limited and varies by day.

Honest expectations

This is a very small place and the walk through it is genuinely short; without the leicha and a meal it is a forty-minute stop after a forty-minute bus ride. Several historic buildings can only be seen from outside. Grinding your own tea takes fifteen minutes of real work and the result tastes mostly of sesame, which surprises people who expected tea.

Nearby

Xinpu's persimmon drying yards and the Emei reservoir are both close.