Beipu

A Hakka township in the foothills east of Hsinchu, Beipu preserves a small but genuine concentration of late-Qing brick merchant houses and ancestral halls around its historic market lane. The area is noted for its traditional Hakka lei cha — a ground-tea beverage drunk with puffed grains — and for a surrounding landscape of orange orchards and secondary-growth forest that supports light trekking routes.