The flat that the tide keeps remaking

Gaomei began as a bathing beach. During the Japanese period the local authority opened one here in 1932, and it stayed open after 1945. Then the port of Taichung was built to the south, and a sandbar was extended north along the coast. The new barrier slowed the current, and the Dajia River began to drop its sediment in the shelter behind it. The beach silted, the water grew shallow, and the swimming area closed in 1976. What replaced it was a flat of fine mud and sand, about 300 hectares. The change was an accident of engineering, and the birds arrived first.

The flat is cut by tidal channels and dotted with patches of seagrass and reed. Fiddler crabs come out at low tide, mudskippers hop between pools, and the exposed sediment feeds birds on migration between Siberia and Southeast Asia. Two plants are the reason the area was protected: the endangered Yunlin sedge, which forms low mats, and a species of water willow found in few other places. The county government announced a wildlife refuge in 2004, and the Ministry of the Interior listed the site as a national wetland in 2007. A 691-metre boardwalk opened in 2014, lifting visitors above the surface instead of letting them walk on it.

The wind blows most afternoons, which is why eighteen turbines were built along the shore. A typhoon destroyed six of them in 2015, and the remainder still turn behind the wetland. In the hour before sunset the shallow water turns into a mirror, and the boardwalk fills with people walking out toward the light. The flat is not a beach: the mud is soft, the tide comes in quickly, and the protected zone is closed to walking. The visitor centre and car park at the landward end opened in 2018, and buses from Qingshui station stop there. The best visit is short, quiet and timed to the tide.