員林信用合作社

February 28th, 2019

Yuanlin Credit Union (員林信用合作社) was a small town bank from Yuanlin, Taiwan, that went out of business at the turn of the century. It originated with a Japanese colonial era credit union founded in 1914 and based out of a long-vanished red brick building directly across from Yuanlin Station (員林車站), a plot of land now occupied by the doomed Golden Empire Building (黃金帝國大樓). In the post-war chaos the original credit union was renamed and reorganized several times, eventually giving birth to the credit union that constructed this particular branch, possibly in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

The former Yuanlin Credit Union doesn’t look so bad from the street. Note the original logo at the top of the façade.

The entrance to the old bank still bears the outlines of the original characters overhead, from right to left.

The Taiwanese banking sector, dominated by state-owned banks, underwent liberalization and deregulation in the late 1980s and early 1990s¹. Consumer confidence began to ebb, however, and a series of widely publicized bank runs in 1995 and 1996 prompted government intervention. Although Taiwan weathered the 1997 Asian financial crisis dozens of small banks and agricultural cooperatives were in serious trouble by the end of the decade, Yuanlin Credit Union among them.

Inside the lobby of an abandoned bank in Yuanlin.

Behind the counter at the former Yuanlin Credit Union, later a branch of the Sunny Bank.

Despite rummaging around for items of interest in the drawers there were nothing much that caught my eye.

The open vault still bears the full name of the Yuanlin Township Credit Union.

A financial reform task force formed in the late 1990s to deal with the problem. The government adopted a policy of arranging mergers between failing institutions and healthier organizations ready for expansion. This brings us to Sunny Bank (陽信商業銀行), which was originally founded in 1957 as the Yangmingshan Credit Union and reorganized into a commercial bank in 1997. Sunny Bank acquired Yuanlin Credit Union in 2001 and either closed and sold or completely rebranded its remaining branches². This particular branch continued to operated for several years but was eventually closed at an unknown date, almost certainly whenever the newer Sunny Bank branch opened closer to the train station.

Through the office to the narrow courtyard at the back of the building. Those are bathrooms on the right.

An empty safe near the back of the old bank. Nothing but dust inside.

Vintage wooden frames and windowpanes stained by the passage of years.

Ascending to the second floor office (二樓辦公廳).

Reflecting on the immensity of time on the gutted second level.

Some odious form of slime oozing from the ceiling of the abandoned bank.

The generalissimo watching over empty rooms.

Cutout babes in the back office of an abandoned bank.

Looking backwards from the second level of the old bank.

The top level is an utter disaster zone. Much of the rooftop has collapsed, leaving it open to the elements.

Without business records or other details to examine I’m left guessing about the date of construction. Based solely on its authoritarian modernist style I would estimate this was built in the early 1970s, but there is considerable margin for error. Whatever the case, the building was stripped of anything worth salvaging at some point—hence all the wiring shown in several of these photos.

One last look at an abandoned credit union in Yuanlin.

These photos date back to 2016 and I haven’t returned to check up on the status of the building since then. Yuanlin is changing fast so there’s a good chance this old bank might be gone by now³. For more from Yuanlin check out this extensive post about what you’ll find around town!

Postscript: this old bank was sold and converted into a KTV around 2023.

If you’re interested in a detailed history, check out The Development of Banking in Taiwan: the Historical Impact on Future Challenges by Lawrence L.C. Lee, published in 1998. ↩
According to Wikipedia the bank had a head office and four branches in Yuanlin proper: Zhōngzhèng Branch (中正分社), almost certainly right in front of the train station; Huáchéng Branch (華成分社), likely near the market of the same name on the north side of town; Jǔguāng Branch (莒光分社), along the road of the same name on the west side of town; and Nánmén Branch (南門分社), which might be the one featured in this article if it was not, in fact, the head office. The bank also seems to have had branches in nearby Yongjing and Shetou around when it was dissolved in 2001. ↩
But this isn’t the only old bank in Yuanlin worth a look—not far from the station you’ll find a former branch of the Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行) converted into a restaurant, Pizza Factory (披薩工廠). ↩

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。