Solo jaunts.
Where have I been?
I didn't realise that I haven't written a report for nearly a year. It's not that I've been inactive or not exploring, although I have definitely spent a lot of time being a dad. The few times I did go exploring in this period weren't really successful. For all kind of reasons, including: finding places that I expected something good from but ended up being too far gone (x2), thinking I'd be caught on CCTV if I went in (x1), finding places alarmed inside and out (x1), doing recce missions then not going back (x1), finding one place with only one way in that was firmly locked (x1) and one particular tip off that led to a recce mission without a camera, only to go back 2 days later to find it padlocked again. Could I go in again to the latter, you wonder? Well, not with a 10-feet high metal fence, only for a single building that I only took 3 photos of with my iPhone.
With the exception of the two places that were too far gone, one of them being referenced in an earlier report (榮昌戲院，Rongchang cinema) I was devastated about. To the best of my knowledge, only two people I have spoken to successfully entered past active CCTV, knowing that part of the cinema was still lived in by its present owners and had a dog running loose in the auditorium. But those two people that got in either didn't have enough time to take any photos or lost them after their hard drive crashed. Abandoned since 1991 but partially lived in, there was an inferno that destroyed the entire building, caused by an electrical fire upstairs. It left absolutely nothing restorable and it is now just an empty shell that will be demolished after the present owner sells it. A total time warp that was frozen in as-built condition, tragically lost to history with no proper, up-to-date photos of the interior. I did cycle past with my daughter days after the fire, meeting the owner's son who'd travelled down with the fire investigation team and asked him about photos of the auditorium but they said none existed. The only good photo I found was when it was used for filming once, as seen below (this was taken from Facebook).
One person I know asked for permission was refused entry, and the other had a hostile response from them after lingering outside for too long.
The second place was an entire university campus that only closed in 2019, Asia Pacific Institute of Creativity. By any stretch of the imagination this would once have been an eternal classic site like Yongda (previously reported on). It was completely left as it was when it closed in terms of contents, but in five short years wasn't trashed, but comprehensively sabotaged. Used for airsoft games, there were signs of metal theft from every room in every building, and any artefacts were thrown to the floor and smashed for all their worth, meaning there was nothing worth shooting anywhere on what was already an enormous site. I walked round the site from building to building in hope of finding something, all the while avoiding workers who were going in and out of the buildings around me, somehow never spotting me even once. If anything I just did this to say that I'd seen something before it finally disappears.
Fast forward to March 2023
I went down south for two days in Jiayi, a place I have visited a few times both for exploring and non-exploring purposes, to check out anything that I had pinned to my map. I had quite a few pins on my map down here, either sites that had been done before and shared with me by different people, whereas others were my own finds, having done plenty of Google searches to find places that either flew under everybody's radar or had only recently closed. One particular place was a sugar factory I discovered by chance, having seen some trains in a park next door whilst driving past with my daughter in 2023. It looked derelict and so I had very high hopes for it; alas, it was not to be. I found one way into the site, however in addition to a static gate guard, every single corner of the rotting buildings were covered by CCTV. Not one single blind spot to be found, so any attempt would have inevitably been a failure.
The rural high school
Then there was a senior high school which closed in 2019, and was now extremely heavily overgrown with no sign that anybody protected it... apart from a security sticker that had whitened under punishing sunlight. So, access is easy enough and I got in to the courtyard. I walk around to acclimatise to my unfamiliar surroundings, and to assess the security situation. Most of the classrooms are locked, but there are at least two left unlocked. So I walk in, and find everything has been left behind, although there is no power. Not that I take my camera out... yet. So, completely unknowing of what will happen just ten minutes later, I walk around the school fields, under a jungle of banyan trees that grew in place of where students and teachers just six years ago spent their lives. Unaware of who was coming, I walk under their roots, finding any windows or doors that grant access to the classrooms. Some windows have been smashed, and other classrooms left unlocked... you wonder why, don't you?
The answer is something I have NEVER borne witness to before: silent alarms, activated by magnetic door switches. I've encountered several newly-closed places that are protected either by PIR systems or magnetic-door switches, but none of them were silent. At least if an alarm yells at me to run away, I have a chance to make a getaway before security turn up. Not this time. I noticed one security panel with red lights on it, but ignore it. But wait... there's a security car parked at the front gate, and there's nowhere to hide so I give myself up. Expecting a fiery exchange from a defensive security guard, armed with a baton and pepper spray, there's a look of confusion on the guard's face, a man who can only be in his early 20s. An exchange follows, all in Chinese.
Guard: "Foreigner..."
Me: "Don't worry, I'm just a photographer. I'm here to take photos of the school."
Guard: "I didn't expect you to be a foreigner, why the hell are you here?"
Me: "I'm an explorer, this is what I do."
Guard: "OK, well you've set off three alarms so I've had to come out here to see what's happening."
He calls the school management team to say I've been found, and he tells them the situation. In response, they tell him to call the police. And so I sit and wait with the guard, and chat with him. Without any anger or harsh words, we sit and wait for the police to come, and chat together. I get the typical questions about my language ability, my job, where I live, and about my daughter. A pleasant exchange. So I ask him how he found me...
He brings out an iPad and shows me an app. It says: doors opened to two classrooms, and also the baking classroom. He knows exactly where I've been. He tells me about his job too, that this day was quiet overtime for him, and that for this place, although he has never seen any urbexers, he gets endless alerts during his night shifts to say people have broken into places like this school, with intent to steal anything of value, including metal and computers. Nothing has ever happened in the day until now.
Then the police turn up, and again were very calm, insisting that I need not apologise for wasting their time. They talk with me and the guard about what happened, and ultimately say that because I have neither done damage nor committed theft, that there is nothing they need to do; so they drive away. For the future, the guard and police advise me that in the future, if I want to go inside these places that they can directly contact the owners or management if I wish to go in. So that leaves just me and the guard, and after exchanges of goodwill, we say goodbye and I'm off.
I then check out a long-derelict school just 10 minutes drive away, which although I only ever had rock-bottom hopes for (it was stripped bare), had since been restored and repurposed. Then there was another university campus, which had been partially converted to a bilingual school, but most buildings still (I could only guess) left derelict. However, because it only closed in 2020, it was unclear what was explorable and what wasn't. So I didn't risk it. I only had one choice left...
日新大戲院/Rixin cinema
I've actually seen a few photos of this before, but none of them revealed the location, and so I only knew it was there when @Unsympathetica told me so. Like another similar in Tainan county, it was built into a multi-purpose tower block which is still (mostly) in some kind of use. Access was easy as it could possibly be; I walk in, going up stairs which were fully lit, until I reach the fourth floor in darkness, except for a dim children's night light and fire exit light. There's the sign for the cinema.
The projection rooms were bare, although the projectors were moved to the fire exit just outside the auditorium. Exactly the same model as what I've seen in other cinemas here.
The cinema closed in 2002, but because it is located within an active building, you would never, ever know it was there unless you lived or worked inside the block. That's why it's preserved so immaculately.
If you look at the red proscenium on the right where it says 康樂戲院對面, this is the address for a contact lens shop, stating that it is opposite yet another derelict cinema I have done before, Kangle!
The main projection room
Yellow and green: nobody under 12 is permitted to watch this film.
Yellow and red: tomorrow's screenings.
Red and black: the last day.
On the right are handwritten adverts for films of 2001, the one with yellow writing being for a film called The Accidental Spy starring Jackie Chan.
Film posters from 2001 or 2002.
The second projection room
An abandoned karaoke bar opposite, mostly stripped and bland.
More in the next post...
Where have I been?
I didn't realise that I haven't written a report for nearly a year. It's not that I've been inactive or not exploring, although I have definitely spent a lot of time being a dad. The few times I did go exploring in this period weren't really successful. For all kind of reasons, including: finding places that I expected something good from but ended up being too far gone (x2), thinking I'd be caught on CCTV if I went in (x1), finding places alarmed inside and out (x1), doing recce missions then not going back (x1), finding one place with only one way in that was firmly locked (x1) and one particular tip off that led to a recce mission without a camera, only to go back 2 days later to find it padlocked again. Could I go in again to the latter, you wonder? Well, not with a 10-feet high metal fence, only for a single building that I only took 3 photos of with my iPhone.
With the exception of the two places that were too far gone, one of them being referenced in an earlier report (榮昌戲院，Rongchang cinema) I was devastated about. To the best of my knowledge, only two people I have spoken to successfully entered past active CCTV, knowing that part of the cinema was still lived in by its present owners and had a dog running loose in the auditorium. But those two people that got in either didn't have enough time to take any photos or lost them after their hard drive crashed. Abandoned since 1991 but partially lived in, there was an inferno that destroyed the entire building, caused by an electrical fire upstairs. It left absolutely nothing restorable and it is now just an empty shell that will be demolished after the present owner sells it. A total time warp that was frozen in as-built condition, tragically lost to history with no proper, up-to-date photos of the interior. I did cycle past with my daughter days after the fire, meeting the owner's son who'd travelled down with the fire investigation team and asked him about photos of the auditorium but they said none existed. The only good photo I found was when it was used for filming once, as seen below (this was taken from Facebook).
One person I know asked for permission was refused entry, and the other had a hostile response from them after lingering outside for too long.
The second place was an entire university campus that only closed in 2019, Asia Pacific Institute of Creativity. By any stretch of the imagination this would once have been an eternal classic site like Yongda (previously reported on). It was completely left as it was when it closed in terms of contents, but in five short years wasn't trashed, but comprehensively sabotaged. Used for airsoft games, there were signs of metal theft from every room in every building, and any artefacts were thrown to the floor and smashed for all their worth, meaning there was nothing worth shooting anywhere on what was already an enormous site. I walked round the site from building to building in hope of finding something, all the while avoiding workers who were going in and out of the buildings around me, somehow never spotting me even once. If anything I just did this to say that I'd seen something before it finally disappears.
Fast forward to March 2023
I went down south for two days in Jiayi, a place I have visited a few times both for exploring and non-exploring purposes, to check out anything that I had pinned to my map. I had quite a few pins on my map down here, either sites that had been done before and shared with me by different people, whereas others were my own finds, having done plenty of Google searches to find places that either flew under everybody's radar or had only recently closed. One particular place was a sugar factory I discovered by chance, having seen some trains in a park next door whilst driving past with my daughter in 2023. It looked derelict and so I had very high hopes for it; alas, it was not to be. I found one way into the site, however in addition to a static gate guard, every single corner of the rotting buildings were covered by CCTV. Not one single blind spot to be found, so any attempt would have inevitably been a failure.
The rural high school
Then there was a senior high school which closed in 2019, and was now extremely heavily overgrown with no sign that anybody protected it... apart from a security sticker that had whitened under punishing sunlight. So, access is easy enough and I got in to the courtyard. I walk around to acclimatise to my unfamiliar surroundings, and to assess the security situation. Most of the classrooms are locked, but there are at least two left unlocked. So I walk in, and find everything has been left behind, although there is no power. Not that I take my camera out... yet. So, completely unknowing of what will happen just ten minutes later, I walk around the school fields, under a jungle of banyan trees that grew in place of where students and teachers just six years ago spent their lives. Unaware of who was coming, I walk under their roots, finding any windows or doors that grant access to the classrooms. Some windows have been smashed, and other classrooms left unlocked... you wonder why, don't you?
The answer is something I have NEVER borne witness to before: silent alarms, activated by magnetic door switches. I've encountered several newly-closed places that are protected either by PIR systems or magnetic-door switches, but none of them were silent. At least if an alarm yells at me to run away, I have a chance to make a getaway before security turn up. Not this time. I noticed one security panel with red lights on it, but ignore it. But wait... there's a security car parked at the front gate, and there's nowhere to hide so I give myself up. Expecting a fiery exchange from a defensive security guard, armed with a baton and pepper spray, there's a look of confusion on the guard's face, a man who can only be in his early 20s. An exchange follows, all in Chinese.
Guard: "Foreigner..."
Me: "Don't worry, I'm just a photographer. I'm here to take photos of the school."
Guard: "I didn't expect you to be a foreigner, why the hell are you here?"
Me: "I'm an explorer, this is what I do."
Guard: "OK, well you've set off three alarms so I've had to come out here to see what's happening."
He calls the school management team to say I've been found, and he tells them the situation. In response, they tell him to call the police. And so I sit and wait with the guard, and chat with him. Without any anger or harsh words, we sit and wait for the police to come, and chat together. I get the typical questions about my language ability, my job, where I live, and about my daughter. A pleasant exchange. So I ask him how he found me...
He brings out an iPad and shows me an app. It says: doors opened to two classrooms, and also the baking classroom. He knows exactly where I've been. He tells me about his job too, that this day was quiet overtime for him, and that for this place, although he has never seen any urbexers, he gets endless alerts during his night shifts to say people have broken into places like this school, with intent to steal anything of value, including metal and computers. Nothing has ever happened in the day until now.
Then the police turn up, and again were very calm, insisting that I need not apologise for wasting their time. They talk with me and the guard about what happened, and ultimately say that because I have neither done damage nor committed theft, that there is nothing they need to do; so they drive away. For the future, the guard and police advise me that in the future, if I want to go inside these places that they can directly contact the owners or management if I wish to go in. So that leaves just me and the guard, and after exchanges of goodwill, we say goodbye and I'm off.
I then check out a long-derelict school just 10 minutes drive away, which although I only ever had rock-bottom hopes for (it was stripped bare), had since been restored and repurposed. Then there was another university campus, which had been partially converted to a bilingual school, but most buildings still (I could only guess) left derelict. However, because it only closed in 2020, it was unclear what was explorable and what wasn't. So I didn't risk it. I only had one choice left...
日新大戲院/Rixin cinema
I've actually seen a few photos of this before, but none of them revealed the location, and so I only knew it was there when @Unsympathetica told me so. Like another similar in Tainan county, it was built into a multi-purpose tower block which is still (mostly) in some kind of use. Access was easy as it could possibly be; I walk in, going up stairs which were fully lit, until I reach the fourth floor in darkness, except for a dim children's night light and fire exit light. There's the sign for the cinema.
The projection rooms were bare, although the projectors were moved to the fire exit just outside the auditorium. Exactly the same model as what I've seen in other cinemas here.
The cinema closed in 2002, but because it is located within an active building, you would never, ever know it was there unless you lived or worked inside the block. That's why it's preserved so immaculately.
If you look at the red proscenium on the right where it says 康樂戲院對面, this is the address for a contact lens shop, stating that it is opposite yet another derelict cinema I have done before, Kangle!
The main projection room
Yellow and green: nobody under 12 is permitted to watch this film.
Yellow and red: tomorrow's screenings.
Red and black: the last day.
On the right are handwritten adverts for films of 2001, the one with yellow writing being for a film called The Accidental Spy starring Jackie Chan.
Film posters from 2001 or 2002.
The second projection room
An abandoned karaoke bar opposite, mostly stripped and bland.
More in the next post...
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