Thirty-Two Islands, Two Shores Facing

The Changshan Islands are a group of 32 islands across the southern portion of the Bohai Strait, the waterway that connects the Bohai Sea to the Yellow Sea, lying between the Jiaodong and Liaodong peninsulas, south to Penglai and north to Dalian. In Chinese they are also the Long Islands, and anciently the Sandy Gate Islands; under the Song they were used to confine soldiers who had broken military law, a Song gazetteer placing the island fifty li out to sea from the county of Penglai, and in 962 the condemned were sent there. Their land area is 56 square kilometres, the surrounding waters 8,700, and the coastline 146 kilometres, running 56.4 kilometres north to south and 30.8 kilometres east to west. Ten of the 32 are inhabited; the rest are little more than sand spits and rock.

Miaodao, the Temple Island, is named for the temples built on it; Xianying Palace there was begun in 1122 in the Northern Song as a Taoist temple to the sea goddess Matsu and later became Buddhist, and the local government has restored it to its Ming dynasty appearance. The county's main work is aquaculture, producing sea cucumbers, abalone, sea urchins, bivalves, kelp, scallops, prawns and fish, with tourism beside it and resort hotels in many villages. A national nature reserve and a national forest park lie on the islands, on a flyway that crosses the Bohai Sea, and fourteen waterways pass through the territory, three of them international. Until December 1, 2008 the islands were closed to foreign nationals; the county itself was abolished in 2020 and its forty villages folded into Penglai District.