Taiwan's longest-running dance club, the legendary TeXound has been hassled into submission and is bowing to police pressure with a final party tomorrow night, after which it will say adieu and close down for good.
The sound system that became the notorious underground club TeXound on the intersection of Jianguo South Road and Nanjing East Road and then morphed into the predominantly gay club across the road on Nanjing East Road, will be no more after tomorrow night's "Adieu, I Love TeXound."
"TeXoundians" may mourn and Taipei will lose its only licensed non-commercial electronic music club, but constant raids by the police have taken their toll and even full-on clubbers have become bored and scared off by ID checks, the threat of urine testing and being told to get face down on the floor for 30 minutes at a time.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
"TeXound is closing down because of the police problem. They come every single Friday and Saturday and it just makes the business really bad," said Jimmy Chen, a DJ and promoter from the club. "If I was a customer and I came twice and the same thing happened [a police raid], then I wouldn't come either."
"Taiwan's clubs always last for a short time, there's always an end. It's just like a relationship. I'm still going to be DJing and doing promotions, but not for TeXound. TeXound will be no more," Chen said.
Fellow DJ and TeXound founder Tiger agreed and said five years and four months was long enough for a club to do business and it was time to move on.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
"For me, I guess the best times were in 1999 and 2000, it was really underground and more mixed and there was plenty going on. It was exciting. Now I just want to rest for a while."
The 36-year-old has been DJing for 18 years and before starting TeXound was a resident at Kiss and at a gangster's dive called Queens, which wasn't gay at all.
"That was a mad place," Tiger said. "Sometimes when we went there it was crazy with fighting. One time, two gangs were facing off and the bottles were flying through the air as we played."
TeXound on Jianguo was known for pulling in the more raffish elements of society and also had a reputation for being connected with organized crime itself.
That didn't prevent TeXound becoming ever more popular, however, which was the reason it moved across the road to bigger premises.
Partly because of Chen and DJ Victor -- who are gay, proud of it and attract a large following to any club they play at -- TeXound became known as a late-night spot for taking your shirt off, sweating with hundreds of other men and passing out from male hormone overload.
The club was also connected with drugs. The high-profile arrests of Anya (
It opened again, fittingly enough, on Valentine's Day last year, but police action intensified, despite pulling in big-name DJs from abroad such as Richie Hawton, Satoshi Tomiie, Tom Stephan, Paulo Mojo and Lee Burridge.
Though TeXound was licensed -- "We paid a lot of money, to the authorities, the police, everyone," Chen said -- it could not avoid media opprobrium and police action.
The fact is, the city council and police had no power to close the club or suspend its water and electricity supplies, even though it was proven ecstasy was taken on the premises. But constant harassment by the police wore down the punters.
Tiger said he had plans for a new place that would feature progressive, tribal and tech house, and which would be more mixed, but still underground. He said TeXonians should keep their "Adieu, I love TeXound" flyers as holders would be given a "special surprise" in about three months.
In the meantime, for the last time, and head-to-head, it will be TeXound's top DJs: Main room 11pm to 1am Taco and Floyed go temple-to-temple, Gravity and Eric Huang from 1am to 3am, Victor Cheng and Jimmy Chen from 3am to 5am, Stone and Tiger duel it out 5am to 7am, and Joe and Teddy Dong battle to the end from 7am to 9am. In the X-Bar: Floyed, Teddy Dong and Eric Huang.
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
Jade Mountain (玉山) — Taiwan’s highest peak — is the ultimate goal for those attempting a through-hike of the Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道), and that’s precisely where we’re headed in this final installment of a quartet of articles covering the Greenway. Picking up the trail at the Tsou tribal villages of Dabang and Tefuye, it’s worth stocking up on provisions before setting off, since — aside from the scant offerings available on the mountain’s Dongpu Lodge (東埔山莊) and Paiyun Lodge’s (排雲山莊) meal service — there’s nowhere to get food from here on out. TEFUYE HISTORIC TRAIL The journey recommences with
RSS