Sanjhih Space Age Ghost Town

Sanjhih Space Age Ghost Town

Taiwan

Sanjhih is a small town on the north coast of Taiwan. It's near Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.

In the late 1970's, a keeper of a rubber company worked out the prototype of the modern space age UFO housing complex using his own factory. He wanted to build a contemporary modern style holiday resort of the future. Unfortunately, the rubber company closed down during  the energy crisis in 1980 and the space age flying saucer houses were left unfinished. The UFO houses were seized by the mortgage lender and sealed up by a bank who failed to sell the property.

In 1988, a development company bought the unfinished UFO houses.  Their plan was to change the ailing modern UFO complex into a 5 star resort hotel with the first yacht dock in the north coast of Taiwan. According to their plan, the UFO structures would have been painted white, and there would have been a beautiful modern swimming pool with slides that would start inside the UFO homes and would end in the pool!

In the winter of 1989, almost a year after the renovation had started, the developer abruptly halted all renovations because some of their investors were spooked by the property, believing it was haunted. The development company abandoned the site 'as is' and left the buildings with many of them finished by that time.  You can tell that some of the restored flying saucers still have the untouched new windows waiting to be installed leaning towards the outside. During the last 20 years, the place has been vandalized numerous times.  Amazingly, some of its originality still remains, including old wooden  bed frames, a pool slide and a huge broken Chinese dragon.

The Taiwanese government was planning to dismantle (destroy) what remained of this wonderful complex but no final plans have been made yet. Hopefully, someone with deep pockets, can purchase the site and restore the buildings to their former glory.

Picture credits: Cypherone, Xavier Tzai, Yueh-Hua on Flickr