蘇澳冷泉路廢墟

April 3rd, 2025

There are plenty of crummy old apartment blocks in Taiwan, many of them abandoned and left to the elements. I seldom take more than a cursory look any more since they’re so easy to find—just ride or walk around and look for broken windows and grime. Most of the time there isn’t much to see inside, and typically anything valuable or interesting has almost always been removed. Even so, I stopped for a moment to investigate this particular building in Su’ao, a township in Yilan, and made an intriguing discovery.

An apartment block in Su’ao. What might we find inside?

The gloomy entrance would suggest nobody lives here any more.

At first I wasn’t entirely sure the place was derelict. You can’t always tell if something is genuinely abandoned or just rundown. Not that Taiwan isn’t a beautiful country—because it is—but some people tolerate living in buildings that appear quite dilapidated. Sometimes they’re stuck there, unable to sell and not wealthy enough to move elsewhere.

A cruddy old door with a well-secured window overhead.

Twisted staircase in the leaning tower of Su’ao.

I went up a set of stairs and found closed doors and a lot of junk laying around. My guess is that someone has been using this space for storage—but I still hadn’t entirely discounted the possibility that people still lived here.

Something is not quite right about this.

By the time I reached the third floor I knew something was off about this place. Actually, I was feeling a bit uneasy walking from room to room. And then it hit me—the floors weren’t entirely level. The entire building was leaning on an angle!

The angle of the building is a little more obvious from the rooftop.

The next building over doesn’t look so great either.

Why might the entire building lean to one side? My guess is some combination of earthquakes and land subsidence. Yilan is very seismically active—so much so that there are few tall buildings built here. This may explain why the building was abandoned. Who wants to live in an earthquake-damaged apartment block?

A squatter with a fondness for playing cards.

Well, someone might. I found one room that had obviously been occupied by a squatter, perhaps a migrant fisherman. There were playing cards all around and empty beer bottles. It didn’t look like anyone had been back in a while though.

Water pooling against a wall in the leaning tower.

Descending the second staircase was a harrowing experience. It looked like the railing had snapped off when the building twisted on its foundation. Water was pooling against the wall throughout the stairwell, visually confirming what I had already sensed.

Everything is at an odd angle in this building.

Some effort has been undertaken to prevent people from entering.

There wasn’t too much else to see in this particular ruin. Everything has been cleared out and the damage was not too extreme. That being said, it was an interesting experience to step lightly through a building that has presumably been damaged by earthquakes.

Warning: this location is abandoned, hazardous, or otherwise neglected and may be unsafe and even dangerous! Exercise appropriate precautions when visiting.

警告：此處已廢棄或長期無人管理，可能存在潛在危險。造訪時請務必提高警覺，並做好相關安全防護措施。