The Gold Rush

Further uphill from Golden Waterfall (黃金瀑布) is where the Gold Museum is located. It is still within the Gold Ecological Park of the mountainous Jin Gua Shi (金瓜石) town.

On the way uphill to the Gold Museum is the official residence of the Crown Prince of Japan during his visit to Taiwan. It is really a great place to have a traditional Japanese house as the surrounding is very much like the mountainous region of Japan. Furthermore, the Taiwanese culture is very much influenced by the Japanese.

Along the track up to the Gold Museum is the railroad track for the carts transporting in the workers and channel out the gold ores.

The Gold Building is the most valuable part of the Gold Museum as it houses a very big gold brick and the other ornaments made of gold.

The tools for processing gold from gold ores in the olden days are also on display inside the Gold Building. We were quite surprised to find out that the workers at the goldmine were mostly the prisoners of war during World War II when Taiwan was under the Japanese occupation.

Gold ornaments are compulsory items during the Chinese wedding. Therefore, most gold ornaments are made for the occasion.

The most precious item on display inside the Gold Building has got to be this gold brick that weighs 220.3 kilogrammes. With the current gold price, it is worth about 30 million Ringgit! Wow! That is almost 10 million US dollars! I wish I can have it, but I could only touch it. It is said that touching this gold brick can bring fortune, so I did.

The Gold Building is actually a restored building that fits the objectives of the Gold Ecological Park, i.e., heritage preservation, sustainable development; old buildings reuse as well as localised operations aimed at promoting regional development.

The Waterfall Made of Gold

Jin Gua Shi (金瓜石) was a goldmine and it is now an ecological park. Not far from the Yinyang Sea (陰陽海) is a stream with 'golden' rocks. Our taxi driver told us that these rocks are coated with gold brought by the stream water from the goldmine upstream, but the truth is, these rocks are golden brown due to the stream water that is full of iron hydroxide leached from the geological formation of this region. If these rocks were really coated with gold, I don't think we had the chance to see these rocks!

Further upstream of these golden rocks is the Golden Waterfall (黃金瀑布). The rocks are golden brown in colour due to the iron hydroxide-rich stream water as well, similar to those golden rocks downstream.

Although it was a rainy day, there were still some photographers having a photo outing with a female model. I presume that this place will be packed with photographers and models during good weather, as it is an easy access; just by the roadside, literally.