San Zhi UFO houses are destroyed! (三芝飛碟屋 拆毁)

Most of you are probably wondering…

“What the hell are Sanzhi UFO houses?!”

… Well, take a second to read this Wikipedia excerpt and find out:

The UFO houses were constructed beginning in 1978. They were intended as a vacation resort in a part of the northern coast adjacent to Danshui, and were marketed towards U.S. military officers coming from their East Asian postings. However, the project was abandoned in 1980 due to investment losses and several car accidents death during construction, which is said to have been caused by the unfortuitous act of bisecting the Chinese dragon sculpture located near the resort gates for widening the road to the buildings. Other stories indicated that the site was the former burial ground for Dutch soldiers.

I first heard of them when I was reading a Cracked.com article entitled “The 6 Creepiest Places on Earth” (it’s quite humorous, you should read it!). Seeing a place in Taiwan (just a day trip away from me) rated #2 creepiest place on earth definitely caught my interest.

San Zhi is located near Danshui (the last stop for the MRT) in the northern part of Taipei County. The pod houses (or UFO houses) were located right on the coast of the northern tip of Taiwan. I had planned to visit the site before I left Taiwan, and I finally did on March 27th. There is some news circulating (mostly written in Mandarin Chinese) on the net about whether they are destroyed or not. Mostly just from a news site and some forums; however, none of them have any definite answers or pictures to support that the pod houses were destroyed. So I am writing this to let you know, that none of the pod buildings exist anymore.

My friend, Dave, and I got off the bus from Danshui, walked past a wall graffiti of Che Guevara and then to the gas station which is located beside the site where the pod houses existed until early 2009. Climbed over a wall next to the gas station and to our dismay, it was a flat plot of land bordering the coast. We weren’t surprised though, because the bus driver had told us they were taken down, and I had a bad feeling that they were from the rumors online. We walked towards the beach, anyway and I saw pieces of the FRP (fiber-reinforced plastic) built pod walls. This building material is definitely not suited for something built at a location so vulnerable to high winds and monsoon seasons in Taiwan. It’s no wonder they were in heavy decay and very instable at the time of their destruction. The buildings in the west were green, in the east pink, in the south blue, and in the north white.

Most of the FRP pieces are small, however we did find one very large piece at the end of the beach (far from the actual site).

EDIT: I found a picture on Flickr from Cypherone of the razed area in March 2009.

There may be a museum in the actual downtown of San Zhi about them – or at least some more historical information – but I highly doubt it. We just took the bus back after a quick word with some local beachcombers about the structures.

So, it is with great sadness, I have to say that I was just 1 year late in viewing these very strange and awesome structures. It was still worthwhile to visit though! I am very grateful for all of the toursists and locals who visited the pods before their destruction and took beautiful HDR photographs with their expensive Nikon cameras (much better than my Canon, haha). I read somewhere online, from someone who visited, that it was like ‘walking on another world’ at San Zhi. I hope you enjoy the awesome pictures as much as I do:

By Noelas

Flickr Sets

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cypherone/sets/72157600694356865/
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=San-Zhi
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yusheng/sets/72157594518737058/

I have scoured the web for any information on the late San Zhi pod structures and compiled the most useful links here (many of them have great pictures):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanzhi_UFO_houses
Official News Report: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2009/01/29/2003434810
http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/4622
http://blog.roodo.com/cypherone/archives/3644755.html
http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/28653
http://www.notcot.com/archives/2008/03/san_zhi.php
http://www.bricoleurbanism.org/whimsicality/san-zhi-abandoned-city/
http://sebastian-speaks.blogspot.com/2009/10/san-zhi.html
http://halfasleepinfrogpajamas.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/san-zhr-abandoned-ufo-pod-village/

http://www.oneinchpunch.net/2008/06/19/san-zhi-an-amazing-but-abandoned-housing-complex-in-taiwan/
http://www.impactlab.com/2008/11/03/the-abandoned-pod-village-of-san-zhi/
http://www.austinriba.com/2008/04/abandoned-cities/
http://sofree.cc/truth-about-frp/ (click on English Version) – great pictures
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/abandoned-future-city-san-zhi-taiwan
UFO house past lives
http://maps.pomocnik.com/abandoned-futuristic-resort-san-zhi-taiwan/
http://googlesightseeing.com/2008/01/04/the-mysterious-abandoned-pod-city-of-san-zhi/
http://acidcow.com/pics/6512-abandoned-city-san-zhi-10-pics.html
[En Español] – very nice pictures: http://zonaforo.meristation.com/foros/viewtopic.php?t=1176374
[En Español] – http://abandonados.net/san-zhi-taiwan/

Funny photoshops of the pods: http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=2424480

Here are 7 Abandoned Architectural Wonders of Modern Asia (#3 is San Zhi) by weburbanist.com

And for more urban decay, derelict buildings, and awesome feats of mankind, here’s a forum thread dedicated to it: http://www.collective-zine.co.uk/cboard/topic41752-fascinating-buildingsstructures.html

Farewell, strange pod structures.

@ The Daily Bubble Tea – Hahahaha, Oh well. As I wrote though, it was still worth the trip. And now the internet has some extra pictures for any people not sure. Thanks for linking my blog!

~ by flerick on April 5, 2010.