Baekje Hospital

Exterior Shot of Baekje Hospital

The former Baekje Hospital is a heritage building in Busan, the second largest city in South Korea. Built in 1922 by Choi Yong-hae, a Korean living in Japan, it is located in Choryang, Busan’s historic Chinatown. It was the first private hospital in the city but only remained in business for about a decade before the building was repurposed. Over the years the former hospital has been used as army barracks, police station, Chinese restaurant, wedding hall, and more. This was even the home of a consulate for the Republic of China (now generally known as Taiwan) at some point, probably long before diplomatic recognition ended in 1992.

Xiluo Yuandong Theater 西螺遠東戲院

Yuandong Theater Ticket Booth Trash

Xiluo is a small historic town in rural Yunlin, Taiwan. Despite its diminutive size Xiluo was once home to three standalone movie theaters: the eponymous Xiluo Theater (西螺戲院), Yisheng Theater (一生戲院), and Yuǎndōng Theater (遠東戲院, literally “Far East Theater”), the subject of this brief report. Previously I misidentified Yisheng Theater as Yuandong, something I only learned after visiting a photo exhibition at Huashan 1914 Creative Park in 2017. After realizing my mistake I went to some lengths to locate and later visit this theater—which, in hindsight, I’ve passed on several occasions without noticing it down a small side street of the same name.

Lingxiao Temple 凌霄殿

Slipping Into Oblivion

The ruins of the former Língxiāo Temple 凌霄殿 can be found in the foothills of the Central Mountain Range 中央山脈 in Puli, Nantou. Likely named after the Chinese trumpet creeper, Campsis grandiflora (中文), it was founded in 1983 by local philanthropist Chen Chou 陳綢, famous across Taiwan for her charity work. The temple is quite remote, more than 10 kilometers down an old forestry road with no other exit, perched on the hillside at an elevation of 1,300 meters (for reference, the Puli Basin 埔里盆地 is around 500 meters above sea level).

Kezikeng New Community 柯子坑新社區

Kezikeng New Community, Zhushan

Located on the outskirts of Zhushan, Kēzikēng New Community 柯子坑新社區 is one of several public housing projects constructed in the aftermath of the 921 Earthquake that devastated central Taiwan in 1999. Despite providing much-needed relief for those who lost their homes in the disaster there were few buyers—and today the complex remains mostly empty and disused. Built with government funds, this poorly-conceived housing project has become yet another example of what Taiwanese call mosquito halls, a term popularized by artist Yao Jui-chung 姚瑞中 and a team of student researchers known as Lost Society Document. Since 2010 they have published six volumes of Mirage, a series of works identifying more than 800 disused public properties all around the country. Some of their work was translated into English—which is how I found out about this particular locale, which I briefly visited in the summer of 2017.

Guobin Commercial Building 國賓商業大樓

The Derelict Guobin Commercial Building 國賓商業大樓

Guóbīn Commercial Building 國賓商業大樓 is an ugly ruin in the heart of Zhongli, a city of around half a million people in Taoyuan, Taiwan. Built at the dawn of the booming 1980s, it was home to a variety of entertainment businesses over the years, and appears to have been mostly abandoned sometime around the turn of the millennium. Much to my surprise I’ve not found much about this place online, which suggests whatever newsworthy calamities befell this derelict commercial building predate the era of digital journalism. Without any sources to draw upon I can only make some educated guesses about what I captured during a brief visit in the early days of 2017.

Dalin Xinxing Theater 大林新興戲院

Asymmetric Cinematic Architecture

What remains of Xīnxīng Theater 新興戲院 can be found just east of the train station in Dalin, a modest town of approximately 30,000 just north of Chiayi City in Taiwan. Despite its relatively small size Dalin once supported five movie theaters, providing entertainment for sugar factory workers and the many soldiers stationed at nearby military bases. Xinxing Theater (not to be confused with the one in Xinpu) originally opened as Rénshān Theater 仁山戲院 in 1954 and remained in business until 1992. Eventually the theater was renovated and subdivided into a billiards hall and KTV (also known as a karaoke box) before it was finally abandoned sometime around 2013. Recently there was talk of buying the property and transforming it into a creative market but its ultimate fate remained unknown until it was finally demolished in 2019.

Postcards From Ershui 二水明信片

Ershui Zheng Ding House 鄭鼎宅

Ershui is a rural township located in the southeastern corner of Changhua, bordering Yunlin and Nantou. Ershui Station 二水車站, constructed in 1935, is the primary point of transfer between the Main Line 縱貫線 of the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) and the Jiji Line 集集線, a tourist railway leading into the interior. Ershui, which literally means “two water”, is named after the Bābǎo Canal 八堡圳, an extensive system of artificial waterways still responsible for irrigating much of the Changhua Plain 彰化平原 three centuries after it was devised. During the Japanese colonial era this small town prospered as a center of woodworking while farmers in the countryside cultivated bananas, grapes, guava, and tobacco, among other crops. Nowadays it is mainly known as a sleepy stopover on the way to parts beyond—but a closer look will reveal several points of interest for anyone curious about Taiwanese history, architecture, and vintage style.

Hsinchu Xinyi New Village 新竹信義新村

The General

Pictured here is a bronze bust of generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in front of the faded emblem of the Kuomintang (KMT) in Xìnyì New Village 信義新村, a military dependents’ village in Hsinchu City. Chiang and the KMT retreated to Taiwan with more than a million Chinese soldiers and their dependents in 1949, bolstering an existing population of seven million Taiwanese. This instantly created a massive housing crisis—all those people needed places to live! The new regime attempted to address this through the development of hundreds of military dependents’ villages, gated enclaves of KMT soldiers and their families, but those were chaotic, desperate, and uncertain times, and many more ended up in informal and often illegal settlements all around Taiwan.

Shezi Theater 社子大戲院

Shezi Grand Theater 社子大戲院

Shèzi Theater 社子大戲院 was founded in 1965 as the first open-air theater in Taipei. Located in southwestern Shilin, it was a fairly informal venue from the sounds of it: an empty lot surrounded by bamboo fencing with films projected on a single screen for up to 500 people every night, stars wheeling overhead. Within three years of opening the owners reinvested some of their profits in filling out the space, adding a balcony level and some rudimentary shelter from the elements. Eventually the theater moved into a more permanent building on the same site, perhaps as late as 1976, when it first appears in business records. The rise of home video in the 1980s gravely impacted the theater business, leading the owners to divide the cinema into two halls, but there was no way to survive the new economy. Shezi Theater closed in 1996, another victim of changing consumer habits in Taiwan.

Shifen Luxing Theater 十分陸興戲院

Longxing Theater 隆興戲院

Lùxìng Theater 陸興戲院 was one of the very first abandoned buildings I explored in Taiwan after arriving back in 2013. I had only been in Taipei for about a week when I took a day trip out to Pingxi, a popular tourist destination in New Taipei, and disembarked from the train at Shífēn Station (十分車站) on a whim. Everyone else on the train had the same idea—which meant the narrow street leading east to Shifen Waterfall (十分大瀑布), reputedly one of finest in the Greater Taipei Area (and my intended destination), was immediately overwhelmed with pedestrian traffic.