Various sites, Taiwan April - July 2024

[True_British_Metal]

All solo jaunts.

I've not been that busy in recent months with exploring, but I still remain active in the shadows, doing continual research and finding new sites as they continue to appear at alarming rates. If you're familiar with my previous work then you'd know why these sites continue to appear so I won't repeat myself, however what I will say is that as I continue to get deeper and deeper into the scene in Taiwan, I'm making new contacts who can share new information with me. The trouble at present is that I am finding a lot of educational institutions, however they have closed less than a year ago at time of writing which means they are often in a kind of transition period where they are not truly abandoned or derelict, and are extremely well protected because of the contents that have been left inside. If by absolute luck they are accessible then they are often in full working condition with lights and water, or in one particular case as referenced in an earlier report... alarmed.

Nevertheless, I still have a LOT of things to look at, so when I get a free weekend I will try the best I can to provide fresh meat for you and myself to enjoy! These sites again don't really warrant individual reports, so once again they are posted as a compilation to warrant posting.

新泰宜婦幼醫院/Xintaiyi Maternity and Children's Hospital
If you look at one of my earlier reports, this one is referenced as the place in the lights are on, but nobody's home.... Once again I turned up to see that the place was likely to have people inside, but things indeed had moved around since then. I was alone again, and I just walked in like before... I just walked around the place, but I was absolutely certain somebody was there on the third floor, and I just wasn't brave enough to stay inside with a camera. Childish as it sounds, I walked in and out, upstairs and downstairs several times, never truly picking up the courage to get my camera out. So I had a plan... wait outside until somebody walked outside. And it worked...

10 minutes later a young teenage boy walks out, and I ask if I can go in and take photos. He tells me to go up to the 3rd floor where his dad is doing some work, and there he is in a ward room doing some work. In a way he was quite perplexed about why I'd come here, but makes jokes with me and tells me that there might me ghosts around. Having had a good laugh with him for a few minutes I was free to roam the hospital at leisure with no fear of being caught by someone who didn't want me there.

To give you a basic idea of history, the place was opened in 1989 as a maternity and pediatric hospital but closed in 2019 because it had a severe lack of funding to keep it open. There is talk of converting it to an elderly care home, but this is not a firm plan according to media reports. That's all I can tell you about the place.

Being a local hospital there was never going to be that much to see left inside, but because I had the luxury of being left alone without fear of reprimands I took the time to find any interesting details the place had to offer.

The only equipment left in the hospital.

Now this is an interesting superstition in Taiwan. On the top of this machine is a packet of 乖乖 crisps. Translated, 乖乖 means be good, so given that Chinese humour much like English relies on homophones and similar sounds, it is a superstition to tape a pack of these crisps to a machine to stop it breaking. We do the same at work with our printers!

So not really worthy of a standalone report, but a good side mission completed for a day. Two more reports to follow.

 

[True_British_Metal]

I did actually return to an undisclosed location, again referenced in this year's earlier report as the secret college. Now I must say, I am bitterly disappointed about this one, because we returned to find several ways in. First we try the smaller windows, but these are far too small for somebody of my stature, and so there was no way I could get inside, and yet through each window I could see every classroom completely intact, full of equipment in mint condition... including real human organs! Alas, this was not to be so me and my friend reverted to our original plan, which was a regular window that was still open. We get in through the window, however that PIR I thought I saw on the wall... it definitely was one, and not an illusion of my imagination.

Now you must remember, people have done this place but it's not as simple as you want it to be. Every SINGLE door in the building that leads outside is fitted with an alarm box, and all classrooms on the ground floor are likely fitted with PIRs. The place is heavily protected, even if the buildings opposite are trashed to within an inch of their lives. And rightfully so, if you see what they've left behind. So I climb in, and all is silent. It was at this point I thought I'd throw caution to the wind and just enter. But it was not to be... as soon as I get too close to the PIR, it springs into life and yells at me to leave. So we both run away, but not completely; we want to try our luck. We stayed for another 20 minutes at a nearby location to see if any security turn up... and they do, 20 minutes later. A lone security guard gets out, carrying a baton that bank guards carry when they are moving cash to and from ATMs. Watching him from a safe vantage point, he does a quick walk outside, then enters the building.

As he inspects the building, we drive past and we catch his eagle eyes; no doubt he began to get suspicious, and so we drive away (probably) never to return!

As we make our way back to Gaoxiong, we stop off at another newly-closed institution which again is already overgrown even if it's been closed for less than a year. It's an enormous site, the size of a modest university, however it had already been fortified with a solitary gate guard at the front. All windows and doors were locked and then tagged with security paper to confirm they had been secured. One for the future, but not for a long time I suspect. So not a single success on Sunday, sadly, especially so considering this was the only day that @quick draw mcgraw had free.

觀光大戲院/Guanguang Theater
This one is yet another one of Taiwan's never-ending, long-derelict cinemas that stand the test of time and lay derelict, decade after decade. This one however is not a high-profile cinema in either historical or exploring circles, and thus far I have only found one set of photos from it, recognising it only with reference to a photo from another explorer despite attempts to conceal its name by the original explorer. Although it is customary for a report here to offer a historical account to give an idea of when it was built, when it closed and what future plans exist for it, in this case I cannot do so because there is no information to go on whatsoever. Some external photos exist, but any reference to construction and closure dates are non-existent. I can only guess it was a late-80s or early-90s closure based on its contents, however there is no denying it has survived beautifully over the decades and by the look of the thick dust everywhere and lack of footprints, very few people have entered.

​

I did actually attempt to enter in February, but failed for the fundamental reason that access is completely unclear and can be very misleading, but even worse it is disgustingly filthy. I did correctly identify one access point initially, but mistook it for a disused shop (for reference, please remember that many of the shops underneath the cinema are still in use, whilst others are disused). This time I chose a different entrance, however this led to another long-disused space which although had working lights after 20+ years was one door down from where I should be.

I did find the correct entrance eventually, and so as to acclimatise to my surroundings, I headed for the upper floors first.

If you are wondering why there is a giant hole in the projection room it is likely because the door on the left is locked and the owners or thieves didn't bother trying to open it again when they wanted to take the projection equipment away.

It is a nice cinema to look at, indeed, but no equipment remains anywhere sadly.

I would like to have explored the backstage area, but already one balcony floor as you can see in the picture above had collapsed and wasn't worth risking.

One thing that makes Taiwanese cinemas so enjoyable and fascinating to see is the retro, likely hand-drawn posters for erotic films that were en vogue in the final era the cinemas operated in. This particular poster can be translated as follows.

Top line: Having fun in the same room, croaking.
Second line: A spring scene in the garden (this is an idiom to indicate something of great beauty that is beginning to appear), and it cannot be hidden or closed. Two wives in one room, and many beautiful things.

變色狼 is a play on words with 變色龍, which means chameleon. 狼 means wolf, so clearly it's referring to some erotic situation. The last line reads: realistic to real life, an erotic film!

Edit: this is a framed picture of a Japanese video game from Tecmo called Silkworm, released in 1988.

The old ticket office downstairs, comparatively modern when compared to other cinemas of similar vintage. A disused boutique shop is next door.

The final part is to follow.

 

[True_British_Metal]

屏東糖廠火車區/Pingdong Sugar Factory trains
Now I understand that this part of the report would be difficult to justify posting, especially considering there are several disused buildings on site, however because I've done a similar report on Taiwan's derelict sugar trains before and because these locos will never run again I'll add it here.

This here is part of a vast site, for which only a very small part is open to the public. The trouble is that whilst I could perhaps have slipped away and looked at some of the disused buildings, I was under polite orders from the security guards at the front not to, and so I chose to honour that promise not to do so. So as you can see, all of these locos have now been taken out of use now that the sugar factory is now effectively derelict, and the sugar plantations have now probably been built over or repurposed. They are all plinthed to look presentable, but will most definitely never run again.

All of the red shunters you see here are all Hitachi-built from 1967, built to transport sugar cane from the fields to the factories around Taiwan, but as far as I know only one sees regular use on tourist trains at Xihu, which has been posted in a separate report on here. To my knowledge only 4 at most have been scrapped, with the rest either derelict or plinthed at a plethora of different locations from sugar factories to children's parks around Taiwan.

One of two Diemas, German-built shunters from 1982. As you probably know there are a fair few of these that lie derelict in at least four different sugar factories that I've posted on here. There are many still operational at the last operational sugar factory in Huwei, and a few others pull tourist trains at Wushulin and Suantou near Jiayi.

So that's all I have. That basically means that with a few exceptions of those plinthed at various locations, I've seen the overwhelming majority of derelict sugar locos in Taiwan now.

Thanks once again for taking the time to read another long compilation,

TBM x

 

[mookster]

That cinema is very nice.

 

[Camera Shy]

Great stuff Tom, enjoy seeing your reports from over there.

 

[tumbles]

Love your work TBM, yes to trains. 🚂

 

[Calamity Jane]

fab ensemble. Great photos. 👍

 

[Lenston]

Superb.