San Zhi, Taiwan

San Zhi Abandoned Vacation Resort

San Zhi is an abandoned vacation resort, nestled along a short stretch of coastline in Northern Taiwan This luxury vacation spot is a complete mystery to locals as well as the tourists and there are several stories regarding the situations which lead to its desertion.

However no one seems to be aware precisely as to why or how the site came to be in that state of disorder. The Sanzhi UFO houses also known as the Sanzhi Pod houses or Sanzhi Pod City are a set of pod shaped buildings which tend to resemble Futuro houses and prefabricated flying saucer shaped housed designed by Matti Suuronen.

The weird looking space village on the outskirts of Taipei was originally erected in the early 1980s for wealthy urbanites intend on being away from the city during weekends and the construction of the innovative resorts eventually stoppedafter a series of fatal accidents.

The most known popular story of its ultimate decline claims various mysterious accidents resulting in numerous deaths leading to the termination of the construction and the project was abandoned in 1980 which was due to financial losses, lack of investment together with a number of deaths taking place at the time of construction.

Ruins of the Future

Left to the fate of time and vandalism, the abandoned Sanzhi Pod City found itself on the tourist map due to its weird architecture and other worldly appearance and the deserted city came to be known informally as the `ruins of the future’.

Locals were of the belief that the area could be haunted. Though it was never opened as a vacation resort, San Zhi can still be explored and the pod like buildings acts as a tourist attraction. The colours of the pod like structures are determined by their location where the buildings towards the west area are made of green shade, while in the east are pink, in the south are blue and in the north are white in colour.Presently all that remains are colourful pod shaped homes which are scattered all across the overgrown coastline.

It would not have become the resort centre which was once intended but San Zhi has now become a tourist attraction in recent years where visitors can explore the isolated graffiti-scattered ruins.

Developers Plan to Turn into a Tourist Destination

Sanzhi Pod City, during its negligence has also served as the subject of a film and used as a filming location by MTV. It has also been shot on several occasion and appeared in various articles contributing to the talks of several online discussions. Inspite of an online petition to re-establish one of the buildings as a museum it was completely destroyed towards the end of 2008.

Developers are hoping to turn the site into a tourist destination with hotels, beaches with amenities. According to legend the doomed resort and the loss of life are attributed to a Chinese dragon sculpture which was disturbed to widen an approach road at the time of the construction while other suggest that the site was once a burial ground for the Dutch soldiers when the Netherlands had established Taiwan in 1624 as a colony.