30-Second Overview:
The 1970s through the 1990s were the golden age of amusement parks in Taiwan, when the island had more than 20 large theme parks. The boom was led by Datong Water Park in Banqiao, followed by the rise of Yage Garden in Taichung and Katori Amusement Park in Dakeng. Yet with the emergence of overseas travel in the 1990s, urban-planning expropriations, and the impact of the 1999 Jiji earthquake, these spaces of collective memory closed one after another. Today, some have become music parks, some have become racetracks, and some have been granted another, more sinister life in urban legend.
On August 4, 1972, traffic around Jiangzicui in Banqiao ground to a halt. It was the opening day of Datong Water Park. Its 3,000-ping parking lot was nearly impossible to enter, and the situation even prompted the Taipei County police chief to send additional officers to direct traffic. Built with a NT$30 million investment by construction businessman Chen Zhaobing, this “first park” not only introduced Taiwan’s first 360-degree double-loop spiral roller coaster, the “Happy Dragon,” but also recovered its entire investment cost within half a year.
The crowds were so intense that Chen, the company chairman, had to roll up his sleeves and bring his whole family into the park’s food-service area to serve bowls and chopsticks and wash dishes 1. This scene of a “boss doubling as general help” reflected the extreme hunger among Taiwanese people at the time for modern leisure and entertainment. In an era when overseas tourism had not yet been opened, amusement parks were the only gateway to imagining foreign worlds.
An Escape Through the Steel Forest: The Rise and Expropriation of Datong Water Park
The success of Datong Water Park defined the standard for Taiwan’s first generation of theme parks: mechanical rides, large swimming pools, and high-altitude waterslides. Its appearance instantly turned farmland and low-lying land that had previously had limited value into a gold mine capable of generating as much as NT$1.3 million in holiday revenue. In the 1970s, that amount was enough to buy a street-front townhouse in Banqiao 1.
Yet the fate of Datong Water Park also foreshadowed an internal contradiction in Taiwan’s amusement-park industry: we built amusement parks to escape the city, but the city would eventually expand and swallow them.
As Banqiao’s population surged from 200,000 to 400,000, the planned approach road for the “Xizang Bridge” in the urban plan, now Wanban Bridge, cut straight through the park. In 1992, under the dual pressures of aging equipment and land expropriation, this “first park” announced its closure. Walk into Banqiao Music Park today, and the outdoor music stage beneath your feet is the former site of the waterslide. The steel-beam foundation of the Ferris wheel, unexpectedly unearthed during construction of the underground parking lot, is the last remnant of those brilliant years 2.
Cameras and Broken-Track Rumors: The “Second Lives” of Yage Garden and Katori
If Datong Water Park represented amusement in its purest form, Taichung’s Yage Garden and Katori Amusement Park represented the deep entanglement of amusement parks with mass media and urban legend.
In 1989, CTS variety show The Ultimate Challenge moved to Yage Garden in Taichung for filming. Images of Hu Gua and other entertainers taking on water-based obstacle courses helped Yage Garden rank for years among Taiwan’s top ten privately operated amusement areas. This “European-style garden,” built at a cost of tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars and featuring musical dancing fountains, was once a preferred dating destination for Taiwanese people 3.
Neighboring Katori Amusement Park remained in public memory in a more intense way. In 1994, Katori closed without warning. Soon afterward, supernatural rumors that “the roller coaster track broke, causing heavy casualties” spread widely. Although this has been proven to be a complete rumor, as Katori’s closure was mainly due to poor management and competitive pressure, and no broken-track accident ever occurred, the desolation of the ruins helped turn it into Taiwan’s most famous “haunted amusement park” after it was used as a filming location for the 2017 film The Tag-Along 4.
📝 Curator’s Note: The death of an amusement park is often accompanied by a certain “reversal of sacredness.” Places that once held the loudest laughter, after the power is cut and weeds take over, become projections of the deepest fears.
Confiscated Childhoods: Why Did the Parks Disappear Together?
Consider the list of disappeared parks: Taipei’s Mingde Amusement Park, Asia World near Shimen Reservoir, Wuzhi Amusement Park in Tainan, and Taiwan Folk Village in Changhua 5. Behind the disappearance of these parks were highly similar structural causes:
| Cause of Disappearance | Specific Impact |
|---|---|
| Urban Planning and Regulations | Many early amusement parks were located in river catchment areas or on land reserved for parks, which prevented facilities from being updated and eventually led to expropriation. |
| Shifts in Market Competition | After the 1990s, large corporate operators known as the “three mountains and one village,” meaning Janfusun Fancyworld, Leofoo Village, Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village, and Window on China, rose to prominence, leaving traditional local parks unable to compete. |
| Natural Disasters and the Broader Environment | The 1999 Jiji earthquake severely damaged tourism in central Taiwan. Visitor numbers at Yage Garden, Katori, and other parks fell sharply, becoming the last straw that led to closure. |
| Opening of Overseas Tourism | As tourism was opened in 1979, Taiwanese people’s horizons shifted toward Disney and Universal Studios, while local amusement parks became relatively less attractive. |
Aftertones: Rebuilding Memory on the Ruins
Have these vanished amusement parks truly disappeared?
Not entirely. In 2018, Taichung racing driver Dai Xiaoxiang leased the long-abandoned parking lot of Yage Garden and transformed it into a racetrack, trying to recover amid the ruins the sense of speed remembered by Taiwan’s liu nianji generation, those born in the 1970s 6. And on the rooftop of Dali Department Store in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s only surviving “sky amusement park” remains in place. Its monorail still circles at an easy pace, briefly carrying visitors above the bustling Wufu Road intersection and back through time to 1984 2.
“Let all the beautiful things of the past remain as memories. Even if we returned to the past, we might not be able to find the same memories again.” Sun Jingfeng, then general manager of Datong Water Park, made this reflection when the park closed 1.
Taiwan’s disappeared amusement parks are not wounds in Taiwanese culture, but shells shed in the process of growing up. In their brightest years, they used steel structures and wave pools to provide collective psychological cushioning for an island then taking flight. Later, amid the tides of urbanization, they exited gracefully, or awkwardly, leaving the stage to the next generation.
References
- Taiwan’s First Theme Park: Looking Back on the Beautiful Memories of Datong Water Park — UDN Time: A detailed account of Datong Water Park’s founding process and revenue figures.↩
- Disappeared Amusement Parks - Time Travel Agency — Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank: Provides rich then-and-now comparisons and information on department-store rooftop amusement parks.↩
- The Filming Location of CTS’s Classic Outdoor Program: Yage Garden’s Special Status — United Daily News: A retrospective on the connection between Yage Garden and The Ultimate Challenge.↩
- Supernatural Rumors Spread After Closure: Katori Amusement Park, Once Famous for Its Roller Coaster — UDN Time: Clarifies the reasons for Katori Amusement Park’s closure and the supernatural rumors surrounding it.↩
- Are the Amusement Parks We Visited as Children Still There? Ten Disappeared Parks in Taiwan — The Storm Media: An inventory of Taiwan’s major disappeared amusement parks and their current status.↩
- The Terrifying Abandoned Taichung Amusement Park No One Dared Visit: He Transformed It into a Racetrack for a Childhood Dream — The Storm Media: Reports the story of Yage Garden’s transformation into a racetrack.↩