Houtong

I will admit upfront that Houtong is a slightly absurd place to write about with a straight face, and I’m going to write about it with a straight face anyway, because it genuinely charmed both of us more than several “serious” destinations on this island did.

From Coal Town to Cat Town

Houtong, on the Pingxi rail line northeast of Taipei, was once a serious coal-mining settlement, its economy built entirely around the seams running through the surrounding hills. When the mines closed in the 1990s, the town shrank hard, and by the 2000s it was mostly old infrastructure and an aging population — until a local cat lover started feeding and caring for the strays that had moved into the abandoned buildings, and posted photos online. The internet did what the internet does. Within a few years Houtong had reinvented itself, deliberately and a little improbably, as a cat sanctuary town, with footbridges, cat-shaped signage, and converted mining buildings turned into shelters and cafes.

We got off the train and were greeted, almost literally, by a fat orange tabby sprawled directly across the exit ramp, entirely unbothered by foot traffic stepping around him. The village is small enough to walk in under two hours, its narrow lanes climbing past the old mining office, a preserved section of rail track, and dozens of cats draped over every available warm surface — window ledges, shop awnings, the tops of vending machines.

The Mining Museum Nobody Expects

What surprised me was how seriously Houtong still treats its coal history alongside the cats. A small mining museum near the old processing building displays equipment, photographs, and oral histories from the men who worked the seams, and walking up past the rusted ore carts to the hillside where the shafts once ran gives the town a weight that the cat branding, fun as it is, doesn’t fully capture. It’s a place holding two identities at once, and somehow that works.

When to go: Weekday afternoons are quietest — weekends bring crowds from Taipei specifically for the cats, and the narrow lanes get congested fast. Spring and autumn keep the hillside walk comfortable; the cats, notably, seem indifferent to season.