This train stops at four stations only. 18:30, 20:00, 21:30, then the last service.
Yuli’s bar map has no fifth stop. Accept that first, and tonight goes much more smoothly.
18:30, arrival: count how many there are
The places in Yuli where you can sit down for a drink, as registered, are three bistros: 臣佳立業餐酒館 CHEN & JIA BISTRO at 60-1 Datong Road, 深夜故事餐酒館 (Midnight Story Bistro) at 32 Sec. 2 Ren’ai Road, and 娟姐廚房J.J.Bistro at 382 Zhonghua Road. All three are within walking range of the town centre; the longest leg is a little over ten minutes.
Outside town there is one more, 綠點酒莊TheGreenFarm, whose address is simply 270-13 Yuli Township — not on the grid of the town’s few main streets, so you need a car or a taxi to reach it. Forty-one reviews, 4.8 average: a small sample, but steady.
That is all.
Holiday KTV and the foot-massage shops are counted separately; singing and winding down run on a different track from bars. The full list is on Yuli bars and bistros.
20:00, seated: who each of the three is for
All three call themselves bistros, but the weight of food differs, and picking the wrong one is how people decide Yuli has no bars.
臣佳立業餐酒館 CHEN & JIA BISTRO has the most reviews in town, 326 with a 4.9 average. It is the closest to TRA Yuli Station, a few minutes along Datong Road from the exit. Good for eating first: a proper dinner with a glass or two, budget five to eight hundred a head to be comfortable, menu prices per what is posted. Elders, a group dinner — this is where they go.
深夜故事餐酒館 (Midnight Story Bistro) is on Sec. 2 Ren’ai Road, a little further from the centre, with 165 reviews at 4.7. The name carries the word “midnight,” and it is the most bar-like of the three: going alone, going as a pair, wanting to sit a while longer before leaving — pick this one.
娟姐廚房J.J.Bistro on Zhonghua Road has 129 reviews at 4.5, and the home-kitchen smell outweighs the alcohol. For quiet conversation without music over the top, this fits best.
If it is the drink itself you want rather than the room, there is a bottle shop at 150 Guangfu Road with a very long registered name: 全鴻菸酒行-花蓮玉里葡萄酒 葡萄氣泡酒 紀念酒 人氣洋酒 進口啤酒 平價酒推薦. Thirty-two reviews, 4.9. A bottle carried back to a guesthouse balcony is Yuli’s version of the second round.
21:30: switch venues, or not
Half past nine is the critical moment on this line.
The town centre is already closing by then; the earlier piece noted that after nine you can hear the river, and that is true. Bistro hours follow on-site notices, but if the thought of “one more place” only comes after half past nine, the likely outcome is walking up to a shutter.
So run the order backwards: be seated at your first place before eight, do not switch after eating, and stay put until closing. If you must move, move to the foot-massage shops in the building at 138 Zhongzheng Road, not to another bar.
For singing, 好樂迪玉里店 (Holiday KTV Yuli) at 113 Sec. 2 Zhongshan Road is the only KTV in town, 116 reviews with a 4.0 average; room slots per what is posted.
Small print on the back: Ruisui and Fuli
On this stretch of the southern valley, Ruisui is about thirty minutes north of Yuli and Fuli about thirty minutes south. Both get asked, “is there a bar?”
No — at least nothing on record at bar level. Ruisui’s night is in the bathhouses and hot-spring hotels along Wenquan Road, and the Ruisui hot-spring piece covers it in detail; Fuli’s night is the lunchbox shops and snack stalls on Zhongshan Road closing by seven or eight, and the post-Sixty-Stone-Mountain dinner piece is exactly about why you head north to Yuli for a hot meal.
To string the three towns into one evening there is only one order: daytime in Ruisui or Fuli, dinner and that drink in Yuli, overnight in Yuli. The reverse — leaving Yuli after drinking and driving to Ruisui or Fuli — means Highway 9 and unlit mountain stretches, and nobody should be holding a wheel in that state.
Last train: two things you cannot gamble on
The first is the TRA. Yuli Station is the major stop in the southern valley, most express trains call, and it is about an hour to either Hualien City or Taitung City. The last train time gets checked before you sit down, not halfway through a drink. If you check and find you will miss it, accommodation has to be booked on the spot: fine on autumn and winter weekdays, but during the daylily season from August to mid-September, rooms in town are as tight as rooms on the mountain.
The second is taxis. Short in-town rides can be called, but supply is thin — a thirty-minute wait after ten at night is normal — and designated drivers are not on call the way they are in Hualien City. For anyone who has been drinking, the practical arrangement is to stay within walking range of the town centre: from the bar door back to your bed in under ten minutes on foot.
If you drove here, the car stays at the guesthouse. Do not touch it tonight.
For a real bar district, that is not on this line; it is an hour away in Hualien City’s old railway district. Yuli’s ticket stops at four stations, the fare is cheap, and there is no extra service after the last train.