中壢財神大樓

January 6th, 2016

The Cáishén Building (財神大樓) is a rundown entertainment complex next to Zhongli Station in Zhongli. Despite appearances, it is not completely abandoned, as most of the building is still occupied by hotels, daytime dance clubs, mobile phone booths, and other businesses serving the many Southeast Asian migrant workers of Taoyuan.

It was also once home to a cinema, Caishen Theater (財神戲院) on the fourth and fifth floors, but it closed around 2000 and those floors have since been cleaned and left idle. Allegedly it was because of the notoriety of the theater that the building came to have its current name.

Additionally, there is one more part of the building that drew my attention from street level; the skeletal outline of some kind of UFO-like structure on the rooftop demanded further investigation.

The shell of a revolving restaurant on the rooftop of a rundown building next to Zhongli Station.

Descending into the lobby next to a dysfunctional elevator that once formed the entrance to the restaurant.

Traces of the abandoned UFO on the wall next to the elevator.

Looking up from the lobby toward the rooftop.

Turns out the ruins on top were once a revolving restaurant with a 360 degree view of the city! Well, the view is still there, but there’s no restaurant up here anymore, or much of anything else really. Clamber down the stairs at the base of the structure and you’ll find a lobby with a broken elevator, obviously the entrance that guests would have passed through on their way to the rooftop. The entire place was abandoned after a huge fire, something that should be evident from the scorch marks visible in several of these photographs. Curiously the place looks an awful lot like the KTV on top of the Qianyue Building (千越大樓) in Taichung, recently profiled on this very site.

The spiral staircase leading up to the former restaurant.

An incredible view of the city of Zhongli.

A few days later I returned at night, took a shortcut to the rooftop that I only discovered after climbing the entire length of the fire escape, and engaged in something I almost never bother with: low-light photography! I haven’t owned a tripod in several years but found one in another abandoned building a few months back and figured I should probably get some use out of it at some point.

The Zhongli city skyline from the ruins of an abandoned rooftop restaurant.

Here I believe the photographs speak for themselves—though it might not be obvious at first that there’s a train departing the station in the penultimate photo. Zhongli looks rather sharp at night, doesn’t it? The Caishen Building is right next to both the train and bus stations so this rooftop is a fantastic place for people watching, among other things.