How does a futuristic resort become a ghost town?

The extraordinary history of the ghost town of San Zhi in Taiwan

Our story is about a small island country in East Asia called Taiwan that lies off the coast of Fujian Province of People's China. The period is the beginning of the 80s. At the peak of accelerated development, industrialization, and great support from the American taxpayer, Taiwan's economy began to capture the attention of the world and the countries of the region.

When the country's exports grew at ever-increasing rates and the GDP grew at abnormal rates from the accepted norms, many entrepreneurs began to invest the bulk of their money in various economic adventures that would doubtless have received any attention from those with wealth in a period other than boom times.

One of those controversial investments involved an ambitious plan to build a futuristic resort that was influenced by the zeitgeist. On the northwest coast of the island in an area called San Zhi, a housing and hotel project was started to be built that was designed to accommodate all those new Taipei rich who made their fortunes following the capitalist revolution and were now looking for where to spend their money.

The project was carried out in cooperation between the local government and private entrepreneurs from the area and it was supposed to bring in a lot of money for both parties. But as we know, life contains various surprises and things don't always work out the way we plan.

As the work began, strange things began to happen. A series of mysterious accidents struck the construction site, these accidents were widely covered by the local press and soon spread to the state's established press.

Negative media exposure reduced tourism to the area, and vacationers who did visit the site did not get their money's worth because the site was never opened to the general public. Later, rumors were even spread by the locals that the area was haunted - the ghosts of the workers who lost their lives - rumors that took on a life of their own as time passed.

A series of mysterious accidents, financing difficulties and a lack of motivation on the part of the entrepreneurs eventually led to the cancellation of the project. The alien spaceship-like structures were abandoned for many years and the entire area was defined by many as a ghost town. The administration has tried to distance itself from the strange happenings, perhaps this is the reason why the names of the architects who conceived the unique designs cannot be found.

The plot continued to develop as the years passed. Unusually, the abandoned ghost town has become a popular tourist site thanks to its futuristic design, the rumors of haunted buildings and the strange history that has accompanied it since its establishment.

The project will probably never be finished, both because of its strange past and because there is no economic logic for an alternative use of the land. So who knows, maybe the state's goal of extracting profits from the region has been achieved after all?

On the same topic on the science website:

• Hell on earth, a ghost town that started burning in 1962 and to this day the fire in it has not been extinguished