Remains of the 13 Levels

Interesting facts

About 1,000 Allied prisoners of war from Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the US were sent to the surrounding gold mines in 1942–45.

The enargite deposits of Jinguashi were unusually large, a rare case worldwide for a copper ore so rich in gold and silver.

Ore reaching the plant was crushed to fragments under 20 millimetres and then wet-ground into a fine powder before flotation separated the copper.

An earlier smelter was built at Shuinandong in 1906 to process the enargite by dry smelting, but it shut in 1923 because costs had become too high.

The smoke flues are arched concrete tunnels about 2.4 metres wide and 2.6 metres high, with walls 30 centimetres thick.

The first flue, around 1,030 metres long, corroded soon after it was built because of a design flaw, so two more were added.

The third flue was never put to use: by the time it was finished, copper smelting had moved to the newly built Liyue copper smelter nearby.

In 1987 debris flows from Typhoon Lynn destroyed the copper settling ponds and buildings at the foot of the plant.

Japanese staff lived in terraces of four or six houses built from 1906 across the stream, while Han Chinese miners had to put up their own shacks nearby.

The ruined terraces have served as a backdrop for several music videos.

Why it is worth it

On a steep green hillside above the north-eastern coast of Taiwan, the concrete terraces of an old ore-processing plant step down the slope like the levels of a ruined fortress. Locals call the site the 13 Levels, and its stacked, roofless halls have earned it the nickname "the Potala Palace of the mines". It is one of the most striking pieces of industrial heritage in Taiwan, a landscape of rust, moss and bare concrete facing the sea at Shuinandong.

The plant belongs to the story of the Jinguashi gold and copper mines in the hills above. Gold was mined here from the 1890s, and in 1904 large deposits of enargite, a copper ore rich in gold and silver, were found. After a Japanese company took over the mines in 1933, it built a new flotation and cyanide processing plant on this hillside, completing it in two phases in 1935 and 1936. The design used the slope itself as a machine: ore arrived by cableway at the top floor, was crushed, ground with water and separated by flotation as it descended, the copper concentrate going on to the smelter and the gold-rich slurry to cyanide treatment. The processing building alone had eighteen floors. During the Second World War the works were damaged by bombing; after 1945 they were repaired and run by the state-owned Taiwan Metal Mining Company, which added a copper smelter in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When the company ceased operations in 1987, the plant passed to Taiwan Power Company and was left empty. During the war years, Allied prisoners of war were made to work in the nearby gold mines; a memorial park in Jinguashi now remembers those who died there.

Behind the plant, three abandoned flues snake up the mountainside for around a kilometre each. Built in the 1970s from arched reinforced concrete, they were meant to carry the toxic smelter fumes away from the villages to a valley beyond the ridge. The ruins were registered as a historic building in 2007 and form part of the Shuijinjiu mining landscape that Taiwan lists among its potential World Heritage sites. In 2019 a light installation created with the artists Chou Lien and Joyce Ho began to illuminate the levels at night, picking out the ruin against the dark hillside.

Getting there

The ruins stand beside Provincial Highway 2, the coastal road, at Shuinandong in Ruifang District, New Taipei, below the old mining village of Jinguashi. The city of Keelung is about 13 km away; Taipei Songshan Airport (TSA) is about 32 km away.

Remains of the 13 Levels

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

On these lists

From the encyclopaedia