Cape Eluanbi Audio Guide

Cape Eluanbi: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Cape Eluanbi

   Welcome to Cape Eluanbi, the southernmost point of the main island of Taiwan. You are standing at the tip of the Hengchun Peninsula, in Hengchun Township, Pingtung County, within Eluanbi Park. The Chinese name is 鵝鑾鼻. Out here, the land simply runs out. This headland is more than a scenic end of the road. It sits at a meeting of waters. To one side lies South Bay, and to the other Banana Bay. Beyond them, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea meet the Philippine Sea. Over the next few minutes we will look at what the name really means, the people who lived here thousands of years ago, and the great lighthouse that has watched this coast since the nineteenth century. Take a breath of sea air, and let's begin.

2. 02

   A Name With Three Languages: Cape Eluanbi

   Let's start with the name, because it is a puzzle. The Chinese characters for Eluanbi literally mean Goose Bell Nose. It sounds like a poetic description of a headland, but it is not one. The characters are really a sound-spelling. They record the local Hokkien pronunciation, Gô-lôan, and that in turn was used to transliterate a Paiwan word, goran, which means sail. So the name carries three languages in one place: Paiwan, Hokkien and Mandarin. The Mandarin form, Éluánbí, is the one written in pinyin today. The name has changed with the rulers of the island, too. In the Japanese colonial period the cape was known as Garan Bi, and it still appears under that name in the international agreement on ocean boundaries, where it forms part of the dividing line between the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea. A single headland, many names, and each one tells you who was looking at it.

3. 03

   Ancient Footprints Around Cape Eluanbi

   Long before any lighthouse, people lived on this cape. Archaeologists have found evidence of prehistoric habitation at Eluanbi dating to around 3100 BCE. The remains are similar to those of the Xiantao culture, which is known from islands off Taitung County, and locally the site is called Oluanpi-I. The story continues here. Pottery and weaving began to appear under the culture known as Kenting around 2500 BCE. So the very ground beneath this headland holds clues to how early communities lived by this coast. The ground itself has a story too. The area's geological formation is called the Eluanbi Beds, a Pleistocene layer of yellow and brown sand, gravel and clay. The wider village of Eluan, which holds this cape, was recorded by the Dutch under the name Suyd-hoeck. So Europeans were noting this southern corner of the island long before the lighthouse arrived.

4. 04

   The Lighthouse of Cape Eluanbi

   Now to the white tower that dominates the cape. Eluanbi Lighthouse began construction in 1881, and the work was placed under an English engineer, John Reginald Harding, with the architect W. F. Spindey. A man named Wang Fulu oversaw the project and the 500 soldiers sent to protect it. Landing materials here was no easy matter. The beaches suffer heavy swells, so a good part of the effort went into dynamiting coral around a nearby creek and building a concrete jetty, 52 meters, or 170 feet, long, for landing personnel and supplies. Harding himself later wrote a paper describing the erection of this first order light on the southern cape of Formosa. The tower's story did not end there. The Republic of China rebuilt the lighthouse in 1947, and in 1962 it was refurbished with a powerful Fresnel lens. Eluanbi Park opened to the public on 25 December 1982, and the lighthouse itself welcomed regular visitors 10 years later.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   As you wander the park, remember that you are at a place where the geography changes name. Look toward the water and consider how Banana Bay, South Bay, the strait and the open sea all gather around this one point. The village of Eluan around the cape has more to offer. Longpan Park, the marker for the southernmost point of Taiwan, and Manzhou Beach all lie within its bounds, and the village is where classic Kenting begins to turn wilder. So take your time. Read the tower against the sky, listen to the wind, and ask yourself which of this cape's many layers, the language, the ancient settlers or the lighthouse, you would most like to follow next.