The Pingxi Line was laid in 1921 during the Japanese colonial era, carved into the narrow valley of the Jilong River primarily to carry coal down from the mines above Pingxi. The mountains here held some of the richest seams in northern Taiwan, and the line was the artery that made their wealth extractable. Shifen Station itself opened as part of the formalised public railway in 1929, when the colonial government took over the route from its private origins and added passenger service alongside the coal wagons. For decades the valley ran to the rhythm of mining: shifts beginning before dawn, coal dust on the platform, the smell of diesel and damp rock. When Taiwan's coal industry collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s under pressure from cheaper imported coal, the Pingxi Line lost its original purpose. What saved it was not industry but beauty — the steep green hillsides, the waterfalls, the villages strung along the river.

Since the 1990s, Shifen has become synonymous with sky lanterns. The tradition — lighting a paper lantern, writing a wish on its side, and watching it rise on heated air — has roots in Chinese folk practice, but Pingxi turned it into something both communal and spectacular. At Shifen Station, the ritual plays out daily on the open stretch of track between trains. Visitors choose their lantern color (red for luck, yellow for wealth, pink for love, each color carrying its own cargo of hope), write their wishes in brushstroke or felt tip, and hold the lantern aloft while a flame catches inside. The lantern swells, strains upward, lifts free. The surrounding mountains form a natural amphitheater that keeps the lanterns visible longer than they would be over open ground, drifting higher until they are faint sparks against the green ridgeline. The New Taipei City Government formalised the practice with safety regulations and scheduled release windows, so the trains and the lanterns share the sky without collision.

About two kilometers northeast of the station, the Shifen Waterfall drops 20 meters across a curtain 40 meters wide — the widest single waterfall in Taiwan, sometimes called the Little Niagara of Taiwan for the horseshoe shape of its cascade. The comparison flatters neither; Shifen's fall is its own thing, green with the spray-fed moss on every surrounding rock face, loud in a way that seems excessive for a mountain stream until you see the volume of water coming down. The trail from the station follows the river through bamboo and subtropical forest, crossing small bridges over tributaries that feed the main channel. It takes perhaps thirty minutes on foot, or less on a rented bicycle. Most visitors who come for the lanterns stay for the waterfall. Some come only for the waterfall and discover the lanterns by accident. Either order works.

Not everyone at Shifen station is a tourist. The Pingxi Line still carries local residents between the valley's small communities — schoolchildren, elderly residents traveling to Ruifang, vendors making supply runs. The platform does not distinguish between those watching for lanterns and those waiting for the train to work. This ordinary persistence is part of what makes Shifen unusual among tourist destinations: it has not been emptied out and themed. The street market sells tourist trinkets, yes, but also groceries. The sounds of the station are the sounds of actual use — the crossing signal, the announcement in Mandarin, the brief mechanical roar of the local train threading the crowd. Come in the early morning before the tour groups arrive and the station is simply quiet, the mountains close in the mist, the river audible from the platform.

Shifen is the middle stop on the Pingxi Line branch, reached by changing trains at Ruifang Station on the main east-coast line from Taipei. The branch itself is twelve kilometers long and runs through a sequence of small stations — Sandiaoling, Shifen, Lingjiao, Pingxi, Jingtong — each with its own character, its own waterfall or historical trail or lantern tradition. A day pass for the Pingxi Line lets you move between them freely, and most visitors find that a single destination expands naturally into an afternoon of slow travel through the valley. The mountains above are ridged and densely forested; on clear days you can see the ridgeline from Shifen's platform, and on rainy days — which are frequent in this part of Taiwan — the cloud settles into the valleys and the train seems to move through weather rather than simply through it.