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Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

The Mysterious Abandoned Pod City of San Zhi

Friday, 4th January 2008 by Alex

On the very northernmost coast of Taiwan lies the spookily bizarre San Zhi resort, which consists entirely of circular, multi-coloured pods stacked on top of one another. Furthermore, these strange habitats have been completely abandoned for a number of years, and are slowly rotting away into nothing.

One story says that the project had to be abandoned after several fatal accidents occurred during construction, and according to local rumours, this ghost city is now haunted by those who died building it.

There seems to be very little actual information about these buildings available online (at least in English), but they may have been built by the government in the early 80s “in an attempt to position this as a luxurious holiday location for the rich of Taipei”. The concept behind the strange design might have been that they could expand the buildings vertically as required, simply by adding more pods on top.

Whatever the truth behind this mysterious place, make sure you check out these stunning HDR photographs of these utterly weird buildings.

Thanks to Chris Case and James Boorman-Padgett.

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Locations: Taiwan / Categories: , ,

6 Responses to 'The Mysterious Abandoned Pod City of San Zhi'

  1. 1. Jonathan Blundell says: January 4th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    There’s another dome city outside Italy, Texas (45 miles south of Dallas)

    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

    Don’t know if the two are related but here’s some info on the Texas site:
    http://www.monolithic.com/

  2. 2. randall says: January 5th, 2008 at 1:29 am

    i had a black and white photo of those as my background for a while. everyone asked me what there story was and i could only say they were an abandoned development of “the future” in taiwan. thanks for the info.

  3. 3. bbb says: January 6th, 2008 at 12:33 am

    There is nothing mysterious about those buildings.
    Search “sanchih” on Flickr and you will see more pictures of it.
    If you are able to read Chinese, you can Google “三芝 飛碟屋” and find more info on it.
    They are result of a bad architectural design beacause it was constructed by using FRP(Fibre-reinforced_plastic), according to one Chinese blog.

  4. 4. Tammo says: January 6th, 2008 at 8:04 am

    You can see that they are made from plastic in the HDR picture (see the roof of the top left balcony) … not exactly the hallmark of ‘a luxurious holiday location’ … :D

  5. 5. Chipbug says: January 7th, 2008 at 1:09 am

    More photos and a Youtube video of those building: http://sofree.twbbs.org/blog/2007/08/14/237/ .
    There are some information and links to other sites as well, if you can read Chinese.

  6. 6. Ron Donald says: February 5th, 2008 at 6:18 am

    http://www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com/sanjr_taiwan_abandoned_town.htm

    Enjoy the pictures.

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