Spectral Codex

The old stationmaster’s house in Wuri has been left to the elements for years. When will the city get serious about protecting its cultural heritage?

Today I breezed through southern Taichung on my way to the high-speed rail station and parts beyond. Along the way I made a brief stop in Wuri to follow up on a lead I uncovered while researching my much longer feature about the historic Japanese colonial era Wuri Police Station. Apart from the police station there are two other officially designated historic sites in the district (with nearby Jukuiju Mansion almost certain to become the fourth in the near future). One of these is the former Stationmaster Residence (站長宿舍) next to Wuri Station (烏日車站), pictured here. Despite its status as a heritage property the city has done nothing to restore it and little to maintain the old residence. About all they’ve done in recent years is put up metal fencing sturdy enough to prevent the intrusion of mildly curious explorers such…

Gathered here are around forty of my better photographs from a five day stay in Hanoi, Vietnam, in November 2016. All of these images were captured while idly wandering around the famous Old Quarter and its environs. I was not particularly adventurous on this trip but I still managed to find plenty to feast my eyes upon—and the food and coffee certainly lived up to expectations! I also found it interesting to apply some of my growing knowledge of East Asian culture gleaned from these years of living in Taiwan. Each photo is annotated with onward links to more information should anything pique your interest.

This week I visited the small town of Xizhou in southern Changhua to locate the eponymous Xizhou Theater. I found no way into the theater but made a serendipitous discovery while walking around the block in search of another access point. Across the street I noticed the utilitarian outline of the former Xizhou Telecom Bureau (溪州原電信局), a modest building that once housed a combined post office and service counter for the state phone company, then known as the [Directorate General of Telecommunica­tions (交通部電信總局). The sign above the entrance simply reads Diànxìnjú (電信局), or “telecommunications bureau”, which is all anyone needed to know in those days. Taiwan’s telecom monopoly was broken up in 1996 with the privatization of what became known as Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信). In the absence of any sort of historic information about this obscure abandoned office I’d guess it was built sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

Taichung is changing fast. The historic downtown area, formerly one of the worst examples of inner city blight in the nation, is presently undergoing a massive urban renewal effort. Some decaying and disused commercial buildings have been restored, many more await their fate, and others have been demolished before I’ve even had a chance to document their interiors. Zhōngsēn Theater 中森戲院 belongs to this last category: it came down after I shot a preliminary set of photos but before I had a chance to sneak inside. You have to move fast to capture these small histories in their unmaking.

Dōnghé Theater 東和戲院 is an obscure ruin in Shuangxi, a former mining town of approximately 8,000 residents in the mountains of eastern New Taipei. Despite its diminutive size and relatively remote location, Shuangxi has a colorful history extending back to the late Qing dynasty era. Its prime location at the confluence of Mudan Creek and the eponymous Shuang River made it an ideal transshipment point for people and goods traveling to and from Ruifang. The surrounding hills also contained rich deposits of gold and coal deposits, sparking a mining boom that peaked in the mid-20th century with dozens of mines and more than 30,000 miners in the area. Two theaters were in business in the 1950s, but the local entertainment industries declined along with the mining industry, and only the ruins of Donghe Theater remain to provide a glimpse into the past. Although it isn’t formally protected, the site has been tidied up and anyone is welcome to wander in and take a look.

Some people are into urban exploration for the optics—they love visiting the most visually-impressive places and taking cool photos—but I’m just as interested in documenting history and solving puzzles. Animated by curiosity, I have become proficient in navigating the Chinese language web in search of leads. Not all of these turn out to be something interesting but I enjoy those rare days where I set out into the countryside and see how many candidate sites I can knock off my list. This is what originally brought me to the gates of the humble Xizhou Theater 溪州戲院 in the small town of Xizhou, Changhua.

Wuri Police Station 烏日警察官吏派出所 is a historic Japanese colonial era building dating back to the early 1930s. Located in Wuri, Taichung, it was built in a simple, subdued style with more of a nod toward Rationalism than the localized Art Deco or Baroque Revival styles commonly seen in commercial and institutional architecture of Shōwa period Taiwan. After the station was decommissioned in the late 1960s it was used for residential purposes until it was ultimately abandoned for unknown reasons. Historic status was announced in 2004 and officially confirmed in 2013 but restoration efforts were stuck in the planning stages until 2020.

Last October, while living in Zhongli, I ventured out into the countryside for a random bicycle ride on Halloween. Like most of my rides I didn’t have a route planned or anything, only a general intention of checking out the obscure Fugang Old Street (富岡老街) about 15 kilometers west of the city. Along the way I followed my intuition (with a little help from Google Maps) and captured photographs of anything interesting and unusual I came across. Featured here are more than two dozens pictures from this ride through parts of Zhongli, Xinwu, Yangmei, and Pingzhen in western Taoyuan.

One of the more interesting temples I stepped inside on a recent visit to the Old Quarter of Hanoi is the recently renovated Đình Đông Thành (亭東城, loosely: “East City Pavilion”). Having explored many temples in Taiwan over the years I was familiar with some of what I found there—but much of it was completely foreign to me. Looking up information after the fact hasn’t been educational; there are no English language resources about this temple and I haven’t got the same knack for finding information in Vietnamese as I have with Chinese language resources about Taiwan. So, if you’ll pardon my lack of local expertise, I’m going to share a few photos from this relatively obscure temple and attempt to puzzle through some of what caught my eye.

Dàdù Plateau (大肚台地) is a geographic feature of great strategic importance to the defense of central Taiwan. It overlooks the Qīngshuǐ Coastal Plain (清水平原) and occupies high ground on the far edge of the Taichung Basin (台中盆地), home to the majority of the population of Taichung, the third most populous metropolitan area in the nation. The entire length of the plateau is peppered with military facilities from the massive Ching Chuan Kang Air Base (空軍清泉崗基地) in the north to Chénggōng Ridge (成功嶺) down south. In between one will find a number of abandoned or disused bunkers, gun towers, and blockhouses. This post focuses on seven anti-airborne fortifications located in the central part of the plateau starting with the #7 Anti-Airborne Fort (七號反空降堡), my introduction to this cluster of ruins.