In the early years of the Alishan Forest Railway, there was one train in each direction each day. The two steam locomotives — heading up toward Alishan and heading down toward Chiayi — both arrived at Fenqihu around noon. They stopped here not for scenic reasons but practical ones: the engines needed to take on coal and water for the remainder of the climb. While the locomotives were serviced, passengers were free to walk into the small town. Local residents recognized the opportunity. They began selling prepared meals — rice topped with braised pork, vegetables, and Taiwanese sausage, packed into the rectangular wooden boxes that became known as railway bento (便當, biandang). The locomotives were reliable; the lunch traffic was reliable; the town grew. By the time the railway was long established, the Fenqihu bento box had acquired a reputation that outlasted the era of steam. Vendors still sell them from the station platform today, and the NT$100 railway bento remains one of the most famous small meals in Taiwan.

Fenqihu Old Street is 500 meters long, which sounds modest, but the street climbs a hillside rather than running flat — the buildings step with the slope, their facades aligned to the grade, their interiors deeper than they appear from the front. The architecture has the compressed, adaptive quality of mountain towns that grew before anyone planned them: structures fitting themselves to available ground rather than reshaping the land to fit the buildings. Tourism has preserved the street while changing it; shops that once served the railway trade now sell tea, bento boxes, local produce, and souvenirs. The elevation — Fenqihu sits at roughly 1,400 meters — makes it one of the higher inhabited settlements in Chiayi County, and the cooler air and mountain mist that come with the altitude have made it a destination for visitors escaping the summer heat of the lowland coast.

At Fenqihu station, a retired locomotive sits on display: the No. 18 Shay. The Shay was a type of geared steam locomotive designed specifically for steep grades and tight curves — exactly the conditions of the Alishan Forest Railway. Shay locomotives used a flexible drivetrain that allowed them to navigate the sharp curves and heavy grades of mountain railways that would defeat a conventional locomotive. The Alishan line was one of the few places in Asia where Shays were used extensively, and the preserved No. 18 represents a technology that was already becoming obsolete when Fenqihu was at its busiest. It now sits near the platform as evidence of the engineering that made the town possible. The station itself continues to serve the forest railway, though the schedule has changed since the steam era: in 2024, one daily train runs from Chiayi all the way to Alishan, and a second runs as far as Fenqihu before turning back.

Fenqihu is not the destination for most Alishan visitors — it is the passage. The railway stops here on the way up and on the way down, and the town has built its identity around that transit position rather than trying to compete with the park above. Tea from the slopes around Fenqihu — part of the broader Alishan tea-growing region — is sold in town alongside local produce and mountain vegetables. Homestays in the farmhouses and hillside tea fields around Fenqihu offer an alternative to the hotel cluster inside the park: quieter, more intimate, and embedded in the working agricultural landscape that covers the slopes below the national scenic area. For travelers who want to slow down between the coastal city and the high-altitude forest, Fenqihu is the place where the mountain begins to announce itself.