Jingtong Railway Station is one of only four fully wooden stations still well-preserved in all of Taiwan; during the mining boom as many as twelve staff worked here, while today the entire station is tended by just one person. The tale of Jingtong’s rise and fall is probably best known to the Yang Family Chicken Rolls, whose shop sits diagonally across from the station and whose family has lived there for three generations. The Yangs opened a noodle shop here back in the heyday of coal mining, operating around the clock at its peak. When the mines declined, so did business, and around 1968 the shop switched to a grocery that also sold chicken rolls. No one expected tourism to surge later, but the Yang Family Chicken Rolls ended up famous.
Curiously, the chicken roll contains no chicken. A playful wooden sign inside the shop warns every visitor: “The meat soup has no ‘geng’, the chicken roll has no chicken!” In fact, the “chicken roll” is bean-curd skin wrapped around fillings of carrot, taro, onion, and ground pork, sliced and deep-fried until crisp and fragrant with the aroma of taro.