It’s been six months since clubs closed in Taiwan, following the start of a COVID-19 outbreak that began in May—Taiwan’s only major COVID wave in the past two years. Though Taiwan never underwent a forced lockdown, clubs, live music venues, and bars shut down, with crowd restrictions enforced on indoor and outdoor gatherings. 

The end seems to be in sight. Most days this month have seen zero new reported cases, or days in which one case—usually an old one—is found. That being said, it’s still unclear when clubs will reopen, with Pawnshop having recently carried out a successful crowdfunding campaign on FlyingV that raised over one million NT in order to stay open. Although venues that are strictly defined as nightclubs are not yet open, events now take place at live music venues such as Pipe and bars as Revolver and 23 Music Room. 

This weekend on Saturday, FINAL, which has also been closed since May, will be holding an outdoor party at Tiger Mountain in Xinyi. This proves back to the roots for the nightclub in some sense, whose organizers had previously held a number of events at the mountain temple turned outdoor venue in the years before FINAL launched—back when Korner was still king, as Taipei’s only underground nightclub, and the Rebels Against the Neon God parties, named for the Hou Hsiao-hsien Taiwanese New Wave classic, were still being held by what later became the FINAL crew. 

DJing will be much of the FINAL residents, including Ao Wu, Jon Du, Public Property Princess, Sandy, troubl3p, rinrout, and 逼逼ICE放. The event starts at 9:30 PM and will run until 4:30 AM, with the number of attendees capped at 250 in conformance with current regulations on outdoor events. 

Club/Organiser: FINAL