Mailiao Jincheng Theater

Jīnchéng Theater (金城大戲院) is located in Mailiao, a remote coastal township in northwestern Yunlin, Taiwan. It was reputedly built in either 1957 or 1965¹ and probably closed in the late 1980s or very early 1990s, a casualty of changing consumer habits and population outflow to larger urban centers. This hulking monster of a theater accommodated approximately 600 patrons in wooden seats at its peak, catering to the mostly agrarian population of this small town.

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 08:14 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 9Shutter Speed1/320 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value14.7 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 08:12 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 5Shutter Speed1/100 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value11.3 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Jincheng was the third cinema to open in Mailiao². It began as a joint venture of ten shareholders some four hundred meters from the older Mailiao Theater (麥寮戲院). These two cinemas soon fell into a ruinous price war; Jincheng slashed tickets from three yuan to one, enriching the offer with a free popsicle (枝仔冰), and by the early 1970s both had gone out of business. In 1978, the young Lin Dongrong (林東榮), a former projectionist’s apprentice born in 1950, leased the shuttered theater and reopened it, operating it with his wife until the spread of home video forced its ultimate closure in the 1980s.

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 08:11 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 4.5Shutter Speed1/80 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value10.7 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 07:57 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 3.5Shutter Speed1/50 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value9.3 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

For a time the two revitalized cinemas even shared single prints, sending the film reels back and forth by bicycle or motorbike, a just-in-time relay system known as pǎopiàn (跑片). The practice peaked in 1981, when both cinemas scrambled to screen The Returning Soul (借屍還魂), a supernatural drama drawn from a local legend: the 1959 case of Lin Wangyao (林罔腰), a Mailiao woman³ who claimed to be the reincarnation of a girl from Kinmen, Zhu Xiuhua (朱秀華). Unable to outbid one another, the two theaters showed the film together by passing its reels between them, and donated the proceeds to local temples.

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 07:49 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 3.5Shutter Speed1/30 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO400Exposure Value8.5 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 07:51 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 5Shutter Speed1/100 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value11.3 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 07:48 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 6.3Shutter Speed1/160 secFocal Length24.0 mmISO200Exposure Value12.6 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Jincheng Theater opened at a time when the domestic film industry was phasing out Taiwanese language productions. Mandarin Chinese was not widely understood by the townspeople of Mailiao so this theater employed a narrator who provided live translations of Mandarin language films into Taiwanese⁴, a role known as huan-i̍k (翻譯), “the translator”. This practice was a holdover from the Japanese colonial era, where silent film narration was provided by benshi, or piān-sū in Taiwanese Minnan, a tradition that faded into history with the popularization of “talkies” in the 1930s⁵. This theater was reputedly equipped with a narrator’s platform (辯士台) directly beneath the projection room, though no clear evidence of this structure remains today.

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 07:58 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 4.8Shutter Speed1/30 secFocal Length38.0 mmISO1100Exposure Value9.4 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 07:58 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 3.5Shutter Speed1/40 secFocal Length19.0 mmISO200Exposure Value8.9 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 08:00 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 3.5Shutter Speed1/30 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO250Exposure Value8.5 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 08:07 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 4Shutter Speed1/60 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value9.9 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 07:56 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 4Shutter Speed1/60 secFocal Length19.0 mmISO200Exposure Value9.9 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 07:54 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 6.3Shutter Speed1/160 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value12.6 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

When I first published this entry little information could be found about this theater online despite its notoriety among urban exploration and vintage photography aficionados in Taiwan⁶. The location is somewhat remote, in the blighted industrial sprawl of coastal Yunlin, but it is readily found on Google Maps—with 18 reviews (“remember to bring long pants and insect repellent”, one says) and an average rating of 3.9 at the original time of publication. Gaining access is also effortless; the side door is usually wide open and nobody minds if you waltz right in. Despite being well-known there is no large-scale vandalism of the interior, making this an easy and rewarding exploration for novices and more seasoned adventurers alike.

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 08:14 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 9Shutter Speed1/320 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value14.7 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Time has certainly taken a toll on this old theater, and a large section of the roof has collapsed, exposing the interior to the elements. Most of the original wooden seats have deteriorated into mulch but the silver screen remains standing pretty much as it was whenever the last flickering beams of light splayed across its punctuated surface. The projection room is similarly equipped with original gear, and plenty of rolls of decaying rolls of film can be found laying about. For the most part people have hewn close to the urban explorer’s creed: “take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints”.

Date CapturedMarch 2nd, 2018 at 08:15 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 10Shutter Speed1/400 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value15.3 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

These photos were shot on a road trip around Yunlin County in 2018. I ended up visiting about a dozen sites for my ongoing Taiwan theaters project, and this was certainly one of the more interesting explorations (even though it’s already been documented by many others). More of its history is finally coming to light, and it is becoming less difficult to imagine what this place might have been like in the golden age of Taiwanese cinema.

Date CapturedSeptember 14th, 2025 at 08:38 UTCCameraDC-S5M2LensLUMIX S 20-60mm F3.5-5.6Apertureƒ / 3.5Shutter Speed1/60 secFocal Length20.0 mmISO400Exposure Value9.5 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedSeptember 14th, 2025 at 08:42 UTCCameraDC-S5M2LensLUMIX S 20-60mm F3.5-5.6Apertureƒ / 3.5Shutter Speed1/60 secFocal Length20.0 mmISO500Exposure Value9.5 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedSeptember 14th, 2025 at 08:42 UTCCameraDC-S5M2LensLUMIX S 20-60mm F3.5-5.6Apertureƒ / 3.5Shutter Speed1/60 secFocal Length20.0 mmISO200Exposure Value9.5 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedSeptember 14th, 2025 at 08:44 UTCCameraDC-S5M2LensLUMIX S 20-60mm F3.5-5.6Apertureƒ / 6.3Shutter Speed1/250 secFocal Length23.0 mmISO100Exposure Value13.3 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Date CapturedSeptember 14th, 2025 at 08:44 UTCCameraDC-S5M2LensLUMIX S 20-60mm F3.5-5.6Apertureƒ / 8Shutter Speed1/500 secFocal Length20.0 mmISO100Exposure Value15.0 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

Footnotes

1. There is some debate about precisely when this theater opened. History of Movie Theaters in Mailiao, an academic source, specifies 1965, while The News Lens suggests 1957. ↩

2. Mailiao was once home to three theaters: Jincheng; the eponymous Mailiao Theater (麥寮戲院), built in 1958 and out of business in 1986; and Qiaotou Theater (橋頭戲院) in a village further north. ↩

3. Read more about this peculiar tale on Wikipedia or at the Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank. ↩

4. This detail was gleaned from an article entitled Nostalgic Taiwanese Old Theaters: A Glimpse into Golden Ages (懷舊台灣老戲院 走過流金歲月), likely from a newspaper, but the copy I chanced upon did not specify the original source. It is echoed in the journal article also cited in this entry. ↩

5. There are numerous resources exploring the Japanese tradition of benshi online; this brief history provides a solid overview of the practice and this archive contains plenty of interesting content. For a deeper dive into the pre-war history of benshi in Taiwan be sure to read this insightful essay. ↩

6. The Thief of Places has visited the site and interviewed local people about its history but his findings remain unpublished. I’ll update this post if I see anything from him (or anyone else) elucidating the history of this theater. I also chanced upon a YouTube video showing some kids wandering around the theater; there are many more photos and videos on Facebook, but I’ll leave it to you to discover those. ↩