Golden Birds Paradise 金鳥海族樂園

The view from within the abandoned aquarium

Not long after returning to Taiwan in 2015 I received an invitation from a friend to go road tripping down to Hsinchu to check out an abandoned theme park. Along the way we stopped off to check out a derelict cablecar station and the restored Héxìng Station 合興車站 before arriving at the gateway to Golden Birds Paradise 金鳥海族樂園. Located in the rolling hills of Hsinchu not far from the border Taoyuan, it was among the most extensive and well-known theme parks of northern Taiwan at its peak in the 1990s. Business faltered with the rise of new forms of entertainment in the 2000s and from what I can tell it was completely abandoned nearly a decade ago. Most of the amusement park rides were torn out and probably sold for scrap metal long ago—but many of the original buildings remain, neglected and overgrown.