A Journey Through the Ruins of Beitou, Pt 3: Xinmin and Quanmin Groups
Renovated part of the village
The heart village is a former military dependents village occupying a cramped patch of land near the hospital. A small part of the site has been renovated into community exhibition spaces and a small history exhibition. A lot of the upper lanes and alleys are empty and the homes are a bit fallen down. I'm not completely sure what the plans for the upper part of the site are. For now it's an atmospheric little village, home only to cats. At the far end of the site is an abandoned community hotspring bathhouse.
Typical wooden and brick home
The little bathhouse
An exhibition of street drawings in one house
Government Dorms and a few Spring Resorts
In common with a lot of cities in Taiwan there are some typical concrete apartment blocks from the 1960's which are now just empty shells. These were almost certainly for government employees and follow a similar style to others in Taiwan. A couple more blocks like these are scattered around Beitou.
One particular area seems to have a high concentration of ruined buildings. Lane 1, Xinmin Road has one large spring resort and several smaller buildings. The Huayue Spring Resort is a fairly cheap looking structure with thin walls and old fashioned decor. This resort likely became outdated and lost custom to better equipped and less tacky looking places. The building is wide open but there isn't much of interest left inside.
The quite tacky facade of the Huayue Resort
An old bar area
No-one’s bathed here since at least 2011
Across the street there are some much older buildings. They look as though they may be from the 1950's and they seem very ROC government in style. It's possible that this was an extension of the old employee complex that’s down the street (a communal hub of sorts) but information on it is scant. Next to these are a couple of ruined houses or perhaps small resorts that are well-sealed behind elaborate gates. One has a very haunted house on the hill vibe but the street was a little busy to go taking a closer look.
The older buildings next to Huayue
An imposing ruin behind a tall gate
Lots of ruined individual homes around here
Former Ruins
Beitou is actually doing an OK job of cleaning up its crop of desolate places. Ten years ago there were far more ruins than there are today. I expect in another ten years many of the places in these blogs will be gone. Two targets I had for these posts were both destroyed a couple of weeks before I arrived.
Too late for this old spring resort
The First Bank Dormitory Complex was a few years ago a famous historic ruin. Thankfully it was saved before it became another of the area's moldy piles of sticks. There are a few before and after pictures if you follow those links. Sadly this pretty Japanese era complex is still private and off limits to general visitors. This is despite a Google Map link with opening times suggesting you can visit.
There's an odd little railway training complex up the road from the markets. It consists of a few stretches of track and some mock-ups of train carriages. It looks quite out of place as it’s far from any TRA railway. However at the time of construction the nearby Danshui and Xinbeitou lines would both have been regular heavy rail lines. This training site, which has an air of disuse but is still operational, used to have a complex of housing above it. I was too slow to visit these however and it seems all that remains behind a green fence is an old stone staircase. There's a good coverage of the old site on this blog .
Training tracks and a strange mock-up of a train bathroom
Xinbeitou Station is a pretty wooden pavilion built in 1916 with a distinctive roof. When the MRT was built it was removed and taken to a theme park in central Taiwan (now itself a half demolished ruin). Here it decayed over the years and was the subject of a lot of preservationist ire. A couple of years ago the government secured it and it was moved back to Xinbeitou and restored. While some issues were taken with the quality of the restoration it is a far better outcome than leaving it rotting in a forgotten theme park.
The old station has become a nice center of the community
Another site that for years simply moldered away is The Military Sanatorium Building. Located near Heart Village this is one of Beitou’s most recent restorations. It's so recent that it wasn't even finished when I visited but I believe it's open now. Fortunately the workers let me have a look around outside. It’s a long wooden and brick building and is the only original part of the Military Hospital. Here wounded soldiers would heal in the therapeutic hot spring waters.
Conclusions
The ruined resorts I’ve found seem to share the same story of poor facilities and indifference from owners. A lot of optimistic building happened in times when hotsprings were booming in popularity and then a crowded market overstretched many resorts when downturns occurred. Taiwan has been through a few exuberant stock market bubbles and money made was perhaps carelessly thrown at hotel projects in these times. I had thought perhaps a decline in Chinese tourists was a reason however all of these resorts were abandoned before that relations soured. This article from 2005 shows ruined resorts were a problem even then. As hotsprings appeal mostly to Japanese travelers, who have remained more consistent, perhaps Beitou escaped the downturn that hit more Chinese reliant parts of the island. I explored most of these places between December and February, before the world was hit by the coronavirus. From a couple of leisure trips taken since though it doesn't seem like there has been too disastrous a downturn here. The supply of Japanese tourists has dried up but the area is still very popular domestically.
A slightly worn Japanese era home near Puji Temple
Many of the abandoned resorts were in desperate need of renovations and it would have made more sense to completely rebuild to compete against new luxury hotels. However years of declining business meant there were no funds to rebuild, and then no funds to renovate. Rather than spend more money the resorts were just left to rot and the usual fragmented ownership problems meant sites weren't sold off. Beitou also has a lot of government owned sites and sites owned by state-run companies. The former ruins of the TRA dorms, First Bank buildings, and the current Heart Village and nearby tenements are good examples of prior bureaucratic mismanagement. It seems a more pro-active approach has been taken by the state companies in recent years. Beitou has a ton of stuff to visit and some really nice resorts, so support it during these tricky times! Most places will let you hire a hotspring room for a few hours and it's a really nice way to end a hike on nearby Yangmingshan.
A look down the main street in Heart Village
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