Qingshui Cliff
Interesting facts
- It is the highest coastal cliff in Taiwan, and very few sea cliffs in the world combine such a height with such a short drop to the shore.
- The rocks began rising about nine million years ago, as the collision of the Eurasian and Philippine Sea plates pushed deep marble and gneiss to the surface.
- Rockfalls from the cliff have strewn the beaches below with marble in every size, from huge boulders down to grains of sand.
- In 2012 a picture of the cliff appeared in newly issued passports of the People's Republic of China, prompting a protest from Taipei.
- The cliff acts as a natural barrier for wildlife, separating eastern and western lineages of the brown tree frog Buergeria robusta.
- Two sibling species of Takydromus grass lizard meet near the cliff and are divided by a single river, the Liwu.
- After the Second World War the cliff was chosen as one of the Eight Views of Taiwan, and in 2013 it was named among Taiwan's top ten landscapes.
- The Elephant Trunk Tunnel, on the northernmost stretch of the cliff coast, was pictured on the 1961 one-yuan banknote of the Bank of Taiwan.
- The Taiwanese painter Chen Cheng-po made the cliff road the subject of an oil painting in 1930.
- Qingshui Mountain catches moist air blowing in from the Pacific, so clouds often hang along the top of the cliffs.
Why it is worth it
On Taiwan's east coast, north of Hualien, the mountains do not so much meet the Pacific as fall into it. The Chingshui (Qingshui) Cliff is a wall of rock running for about 21 kilometres between the stations of Heping and Chongde, inside Taroko National Park, where ridges averaging some 800 metres in height drop almost sheer to the water. Behind them Chingshui Mountain climbs to 2,408 metres within a short distance of the shore, which makes this one of the steepest meetings of mountain and ocean anywhere, and the whole stretch is counted among the classic scenic wonders of Taiwan.
The cliff is made of the same rocks that form the marble canyon of Taroko Gorge just inland: metamorphosed limestone turned to marble, with gneiss and green schist, pushed up and folded where the Philippine Sea Plate grinds against the Eurasian Plate. From a viewpoint the eye travels down pale, forested rock faces to a narrow ribbon of pebble beach and then to the sea, which changes colour from the shallows to the open ocean. The contrast of colour is the thing to look for, along with the thin line of road cut into the mountainside, appearing and vanishing in tunnels.
That road has its own history. The Qing government cut a footpath along this coast between 1874 and 1876; in the Japanese era it became a road, opened to vehicles in May 1932 after the building of bridges and tunnels, and for decades its northern stretch was only about three and a half metres wide, allowing traffic in one direction at a time. It was widened for two-way traffic by 1990, and in 2020 new tunnels bypassed several of the sections most exposed to landslides. The classic view is from the observation deck just north of the Chongde Tunnel, where the whole curve of cliffs opens along the coast.
Getting there
The cliff lies in Xiulin Township, about 13 km from the village of Xiulin; Hualien Chiashan Airport (HUN) is roughly 23 km away. Taiwan Railways trains on the east-coast line stop at Chongde, about 4 km from the viewing area, as well as at Heren and Xincheng nearby; regional buses and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle also serve the Taroko area. By car or scooter, follow the Suhua Highway north from Hualien to the Chongde observation deck.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Taroko Gorge 18.2 km · gorge
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Qingshui Cliff is a 21 kilometer length of coastal cliffs averaging 800 meters above sea level in Xiulin Township, Hualien County, Taiwan. The tallest peak, Qingshui Mountain, rises 2408 meters directly from the Pacific Ocean. The cliff is located at the southern part of the Suhua Highway that connects the counties of Yilan and Hualien in eastern Taiwan. It is considered to be a very scenic area and is the highest coastal cliff in Taiwan. It is located within Taroko National Park.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
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