Various sites, Taiwan April 2025

[True_British_Metal]

Solo jaunts.

This following report begins with a couple of sites which for me just act as tying up loose ends, rather than doing anything truly groundbreaking. To be honest as mentioned in some previous reports, I have gotten over-ambitious at times with sites over here, especially new schools, when I go in with high hopes and end up getting busted by alarms or not finding any way in at all. I will still make attempts to reveal newly-closed sites as much as I can, but whether I succeed or not is another matter. Although it is very uncommon to have on-site patrolling guards like you'd expect here, or even a basic static guard, it is becoming more common to close a site, especially a school or university, then trip every door and/or room with PIRs, making exploration either very difficult or impossible.

So, since I had another free weekend, I made a last-minute plan to head south to Gaoxiong, to catch up on two loose ends.

鼓山洞/Gushan air raid shelter
Back in 2019 this was actually a tourist attraction that was regularly open to the public, but for reasons I can't remember after the page was deleted from Facebook, was suddenly closed without warning and left to rot. Structural damage is what I would guess to be the reason, but since then it has lain derelict with virtually no attempts to protect or seal the inside. I was expecting it to be in good condition inside, but unfortunately I suspect metal thieves have had their way with parts of it, and nature does its thing and shows no mercy to the inside. You can see some of the pictures from when it was in use as a museum here.

A map to give you an idea of how it looks. Note: 偵訊室：interrogation room, 拘留室：detention room, 民防指揮中心入口：entrance to the civil defence command centre, 盥洗室：washroom, 逃生通道階梯：emergency exit, 機房：ventilation room. The other two are the west and east entrances.

The central detention room

It was built under Japanese rule in 1939, when Taiwan was under colonial rule by Japan. Given its location on the coast of Gaoxiong where the port is, it was a defence against airstrikes from the Americans, which explains why several anti aircraft bunkers were built nearby too; virtually all survive today as heritage sites, albeit unrestored. It spans a total of 200 metres, so not that big, with three tunnels from left to right, one of which goes up a narrow staircase further up the mountain. When Taiwan became independent the government made use of it as a detention room for the security services, and as you walk in it is covered with Styrofoam paneling to act as sound insulation. As for when it closed, since the Facebook page has now been deleted, I can't give an exact date.

As you can see, as time has passed since it was closed as an official government space, water has began to seep in, leaving calcite all over the walls, just like a railway tunnel.

Original artefacts in the interrogation room at the back of the bunker

A map showing Taiwan and south-east China, in the Civil Defence Command Centre

The narrow and claustophobic escape route

Still more to follow.

 

[True_British_Metal]

台灣水泥高雄廠/Gaoxiong Cement Works, Shoushan
Next up is the other derelict cement works of Gaoxiong. Unfortunately the last time I checked the big one from Zuoying in 2022, which you can see in a 2019 report, the long-derelict part had been demolished, but the northern part of the site remained in use; however in the timeframe between now and then, even the previously-live part has now been fully demolished and only one long-derelict kiln remains next to Zuoying HSR station. This one has likewise been mostly long-demolished, although early Taiwanese urban explorers successfully explored what was then a very ruinous space back in around 2013 or so. Parts of this still remain though, so since this was only a 5-minute drive from the bunker, I thought why not see at least what's left? I had zero hopes for this place, but at least I saw something.

Because some parts of the original site are listed structures, they are kept intact and can still be seen across the mountain of Shoushan and from the street. A lone security guard sits in his cabin at the front of the site, never leaving to patrol at any point. What purpose he serves by sitting there when, let's be honest, there is so little left to see, is beyond me, but I was still ever-mindful as I explored what little remains of this once-enormous cement works.

A photo taken under Japanese colonial rule

To give a succinct history, it was built in 1917 when Taiwan was still an emerging nation, not fully industrialised. Cement was called the "mother of industrial engineering", at a time when most was imported from Japan. But when Japan's own cement supplies were more limited, they stopped, and so this factory opened. Eventually the production rights expired, and in 1994 the factory was closed and lay derelict until the vast majority of the structures were demolished, leaving what you see below.

The red-brick warehouse, a listed structure that is now protected by steel supports and a metal canopy in order to prevent total collapse

It was at this point I finished exploring the main site. Up on the mountain of Shoushan there were two other buildings that remained derelict, which hikers can walk up to as they go across the mountain. Unfortunately because they were on the opposite side of the river I regrettably missed the beautiful brick kilns which can be seen at the bottom of one of the hiking trails. I'll link a photo from Wikimedia below.

After a short, unchallenging hike I got to the first structure which is visible from the road below. These are the old truck scales, now dominated by monkeys.

There is no way down from here, because the door is locked.

A view of what was once a huge cement works; this is all that remains today.

This was another monkey hideout, the cement materials inlet. This was also actually a huge building, but now completely inaccessible because the way down has been buried, and the slope on which the building is built will almost-certainly send anyone to their death if they try to get inside it.

The cement materials inlet building from lower down the mountain, which as you can see is impossible to access.

That's all from Gaoxiong and that day. Three more cinemas, all from Taibei will follow in this report.

 

[True_British_Metal]

永和大戲院/Yonghe cinema
I wasn't expecting to do this one. It's one of the first cinemas I ever saw, when I discovered it through Spectral Codex in 2016, but because I got busy with other sites I put this one on the backburner. Likewise SC informed me that the original way in was permanently sealed, leaving this impossible. I did actually give it a cursory look back in 2023, but I wasn't actually exploring that day, rather watching a concert in Ximen; I made my way towards the entrance, but given that getting to it is going down a filth-ridden alleyway that is so narrow you can't outstretch your arms I didn't get far. So that was nearly 2 years ago. To give a succinct and non-detailed history, the cinema opened in 1967 but went out of business in 2000.

Now in 2025, I planned a visit up to Taibei to do whatever I had pinned to my map, deciding what I was going to do day-by day. I wasn't really expecting to get into this one, but I returned to that foul alleyway, blackened by dirt and caked with slippery grease, walking across pipework, which considering it had rained that day meant I had to be exceptionally cautious not to slip into the dirt under my feet. Truly a horrendous experience that I do not recommend for anybody.

This cinema is actually one-of-a-kind, because the foyer has actually been repurposed over the years. Look at this photo from SC; the left side of the auditorium is a 7-11 convenience store, and the right is an Italian restaurant. From the inside, you can see there is a wafer-thin metal partition which separates the derelict cinema and the buzz of activity in the restaurant and convenience store. This repurposing of the space happened between 2009 and 2012.

So I got inside with little effort, much to my surprise. Because it was so tightly-sealed over the years, there's a sort of miasma from the rot and decay inside, which doesn't make navigation particularly pleasant. Everything is in total darkness, and you have to use torchlight to move around from room to room. Making my way upstairs, things nearly went very badly...

I found the doors to the main theater, the Emerald room, only to find them chained and padlocked firmly; was I not going to get in? Well, I walked round to the other side, and although I found chains hanging from the door inside the auditorium, they had since been cut, and I was in. I made my way straight up to the projection room, to explore the ruined space from top to bottom.

Still fully stocked with projectors and all kinds of cinema-related paraphernalia, it still never ceases to surprise me to see places like this, so beautifully stuck in a time warp with only mother nature's hands adding to the decay.

Because of the difficulty of accessing the cinema, the auditorium has held up pretty well over the years, although this won't be for too much longer as there's a hole in the roof of the auditorium where light shines in, suggesting a future collapse.

Now this part, known as the Diamond screen, is actually something nobody has ever seen before; SC suggests from his own report that this was originally padlocked, and has since then been left unlocked. That said it has been partially stripped of its seats and is now full of junk, which we would guess was for the restaurant downstairs.

Looking up at the projection booth, there were two projectors left upstairs as I remember. Unfortunately the fire exit to the left only led downstairs, and the doors to the left led to a well-polished silver door which you see at the entrance to people's houses. This suggested to me that this could potentially be someone's office or living space, so I can only guess that the projection room for this screen is permanently sealed with no possible way in.

Two more cinemas to follow in due course.

 

[HughieD]

Man - what a hattrick of south-east Asian urbex goodness. Taiwan keeps on giving. Fab report(s).

 

[True_British_Metal]

Man - what a hattrick of south-east Asian urbex goodness. Taiwan keeps on giving. Fab report(s).

Ha ha ha ha, you haven't seen what's coming next...

 

[dansgas1000]

Awesome stuff