The Summer Temple Fair | Daxi Bus Terminal — Where the First Episode Starts and the Last One Waits

Hsia Chih-hsun steps off a bus with Chen Nuan-nuan behind him, into a town he has not seen in seven years, and Lin I-hsin is standing there waiting. That is the first episode. In the tenth, Hsia Tien-lung stands in the same spot waiting for the two of them to come back. The series opens and closes at a bus station. Get the address right, because every guide gets it wrong. Taoyuan Bus runs two separate sites in Daxi. The one printed in the location round-ups, Fuxing Road 63, is a vehicle parking yard with a stop sign on it. The one you want is Desheng Road 1, two hundred and fifty metres from the old street: a real terminal with a service counter, waiting seats and a half-arc platform of sixteen numbered bays. Read the destination boards while you are there. Baling, Xiao Wulai, Cihu, Luofu, Bat Cave, Xilang. This is the gateway to the Northern Cross-Island Highway, and the traffic through here is people going up into the mountains, not people coming to look at a filming location. The station front was rebuilt in the Baroque parapet style of the old street shophouses, so the terminal deliberately quotes the town it serves. The operator descends from a Japanese-era railway company that started running buses on the Taoyuan to Daxi route in 1923. Working terminal, free, service hours only, and keep out of the bays. Stand at the mouth of the platform and watch one bus unload. Somebody will get off with a bag, and somebody will be waiting for them, and it will look exactly like the first shot of the series. That happens here about forty times a day. Location data: Taoyuan Bus Company and OpenStreetMap. Coordinates are for the Desheng Road passenger terminal.