I still have thousands of locations to add from years of taking notes and exploring the country... but I've already added more than 1,000 data points for old theaters in Taiwan, which has become my primary area of study over the last several years. Most of them vanished long ago, but there are still hundreds of remnants scattered around the country.

Another curious feature of this theater: it was renamed around 2010, changing from Guoji (International) Theater to Guoxing (with "xing" meaning prosperity). There was a change in ownership, but also an intention to improve the flagging fortunes of the business. The change is visible on the sign!

Guoxing Theater is nothing much to look at, unlike many other cinemas of its vintage. Apparently it was originally a rice mill, which explains the odd shape (more a trapezoid than the usual rectangle), mostly nondescript exterior, and location down a laneway.

An old pylon for Jiechuan Bridge (姉川橋), one of several railway spans along the scenic Niudong Canyon (牛洞峽谷) south of Puli. There's another bridge pylon further along, but it's now lost in the overgrowth and barely discernible. This one required hopping one of those nasty metal fences and some warning woofs from guard dogs at the ugly sheet metal factory next door... but there you are, a rare legacy of the industrial development of the Puli Basin in central #Taiwan!

This tiny bridge is one of Dongshih's more obscure items of recognized cultural heritage. Known as the Jinmen Bridge (金門橋), literally "Golden Gate Bridge", it spans an old irrigation canal running through this Hakka historic village south of the city center. When I first rode up a Hakka grandma was washing vegetables and then laundry on the stone in the bottom right.

Obscure monument to a Japanese teacher in back country Xinshe (殉職山岡先生之碑), Taichung. He attempted to save a bunch of students trapped on a sandbar during a flood and perished. This stone marker was erected around 1930 but is seldom visited nowadays...

The iconic Donggong Theater in Dongshih, out of business for decades, and originally scheduled for demolition in August 2023. For whatever reason it was still standing when I rode through town, so here it is again: a monstrous, hulking, fortress-like cinema, doomed to oblivion. #urbex #TheaterHunt