Hengke Road Dependents Village 橫科路眷村

---

Share

---

Tweet

The Hengke Road dependents village was once home to a community of dependents of ROC soldiers. It sat abandoned for nearly 20 years. Now it has been destroyed. Even though it was full of garbage and decay, it had a charm of its own that is captured in the photos of this blog. 

Background:
The Hengke Road Dependents Village was created sometime after the second world war. This village was built for KMT dependents after 1949 when they fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War. It included 30 households that were once inhabited at the time. 
It was abandoned in 2002 probably due to unlivable conditions in the poorly built houses. The land is owned by the department of defense. Since then it has been an eyesore for the community, and many have complained it has become a secret gathering place for youths to do drugs, etc. However from what I could see on my trip there in 2018, the place is mainly used as a private gardening area by local residents. In addition, the road next to it is very busy but because of the village is very narrow and can only accommodate one direction of traffic at a time. 
The village was razed to the ground in On October 9th, 2021, with no explanation. 

​Map:
Please see below. 

Our Journey:

Because I live close by, I have visited the village many times and entered it twice. It was very hard to find any information on this place, and it is mostly closed off despite it being surrounded by residential houses. It seems some squatters were also living in the houses near the street at the time I visited.
When the village was demolished it included about four backhoes and there was no signage given as to the reason for the destruction or if there was a permit for such action. 

See above for our drone footage of the area. This is like one of the first times I ever flew my drone, in 2018.

View toward Hengke Road. 

View of the east part of the village. 

It is not that hard to get into the village. There was an iron gate that was not locked on the south west corner. It amazes me the number of houses here that fit into such a small space. 

A decaying stairwell. 

More decay in the photos above.

Random trash in this house, perhaps as someone's trash pile.

One of the roofs here used an improved steel frame. 

In the middle of the village, on what would have been the main street, there was a long garden. It seemed to me the main purpose of the village had become a place for old people to grow vegetables in secret. 

More photos of the abandoned gardening grounds in the gallery above. 

Here you can still see the address plates on the houses. This was once No. 10, Lane 1, Alley 22, Hengke Road, Xizhi City 汐止市橫科路22巷1弄10號.

Hula hoop and other crap in someone's old kitchen. 

Table and more garbage. 

Someone made this house into their own algae growing lab. 

This house if full of weeds. 

I assume they are weeds after years of gardening here. 

Concrete house with a collapsed wooden roof. 

Playground for mosquito larvae. 

Most of the houses here are two stories, and most of the second levels are caved in.

Bedroom door on the second floor. 

Old bed frame. 

Garbage under a missing section of the second floor.

What I assume is a new ladder to the second floor. 

Rotten second story bedroom. 

Broken ceiling. I imagine these houses leaked when they were lived in all the time. 

This house had a much more modern and improved roof, but it was not enough I guess. 

Looking through a broken window. 

View of the entrance from the stairway. 

Another view of the gardens inside the village. 

More mosquito habitats. 

Another moquito breeding ground. 

Farming tools. 

View through three houses, and more photos from inside these houses in the gallery above. 

Someone was learning their ABCs here. 

More farming tools. 

Stairwell to the second storey. 

Falling wooden panels. 

Ancient clothing. 

Decaying closet. 

Child's shoe. 

More photos of the second storey above. 

Another look down the Stairwell. 

Old Makeshift door on the ground. 

It must have been hard not to hit your head on these steps. 

More photos from the second storey in the gallery above. 

An old fire extinguisher that looked like it was put to use to put out an actual fire that happened here. 

Another view from the second storey.

Chinese folk god scrolls. 

Closer view. 

Behind this pile of junk is an actual road. 

Why did they engineer a crack in the roof?

Another view of all this disgusting rainwater. 

Ceiling collapsed onto a floor. 

A scuba fin and more junk. 

Fish net and even more junk. 

More photos from near the entrance. 

More decaying closets. 

Decaying living room. 

View of the village from the street. 

An egret down below. 

View of the village from the bridge nearby. 

Some squatters living here in some of the side buildings. I have a feeling the squatters prevented this place from being destroyed for a long time. 

Destruction: October 9th, 2021

While writing this blog, three years after the fact, I searched for more information about it online. I was surprised to learn it had already been destroyed four days earlier on October 9th, 2021. It was already October 13th, so I ran over to look at the damage, and these are the photos I took. 

Complete destruction. 

I searched the permiter for a sign or something to tell me they had a permit for this work, but I found nothing. 

Another view of the destruction. 

At least now Hengke Road can be widened...

More photos of the destruction above.

​Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more blogs to come. 

---

Share