Qingshui Cliff: Marble Cliffs on Taiwan’s Pacific Coast

For twenty-odd kilometres between Su’ao and Hualien, Taiwan’s Central Mountain Range simply refuses to negotiate with the sea. The marble face of Qingshui Cliff drops almost straight down to the Pacific, and the coastal highway threading along its base is one of the most dramatic stretches of road anywhere in East Asia. Odyssey Traveller’s Taiwan Lantern Festival small group tour crosses this stretch on Day 4, on the drive from Yilan toward Hualien. What follows is less a hiking stop than a chance to take in one of Taiwan’s most striking landscapes from the road and a coastal lookout.

Where the Central Mountains Meet the Pacific

Qingshui Cliff (清水斷崖) is the collective name for a run of marble and gneiss headlands along Taiwan’s east coast, roughly between Heping and Chongde in Hualien County. These are metamorphic rocks — the marble began as limestone, folded and recrystallised over millions of years as the Philippine Sea Plate drove into the Eurasian Plate and pushed the Central Mountain Range skyward. The result is a coastline with almost no beach or foreshore to speak of: the mountains simply end, and the Pacific begins. In places the cliff face rises close to 800 metres directly from the water, making it one of the steepest stretches of coastline in East Asia.

The colour is part of what makes the site memorable. Where the marble is exposed and wet — from sea spray, or after rain — it can take on a pale, almost luminous grey-white cast against the deep blue of the Pacific, a contrast many travellers find more striking in person than in photographs.

The Suhua Highway: A Road Carved Into Rock

The road that carries travellers past the cliffs, the Suhua Highway (Provincial Highway 9), has a history almost as dramatic as the geology beside it. Its earliest version was a narrow trail cut into the rock face during the Japanese colonial period, built largely by hand along a coastline with nowhere else to put a road. It was widened and rebuilt in stages across the twentieth century, and long sections now run through tunnels bored directly through the mountains, bypassing the most unstable and rockfall-prone stretches of the original cliff-face route. Older travel writing on Taiwan often described the Suhua Highway as one of the most hair-raising drives in Asia; the modern tunnelled sections have made the journey considerably safer, though the road still commands respect, and closures after heavy rain or seismic activity are not unusual.

How Much Walking Does the Qingshui Cliff Stop Involve?

Very little. This is a scenic stretch of coast seen from the road and, where conditions allow, a roadside lookout, rather than a walking or hiking site. Travellers with limited mobility are not disadvantaged here in the way they might be at a site requiring stairs or an extended walk.

Jiufen, Lanyang and the Road to the Cliff

Qingshui Cliff sits at the end of a day that has already covered a great deal of ground. The tour’s hillside stop at Jiufen and Jinguashi two days earlier introduces the same Central Mountain Range from its old gold-mining flank, further north; by Day 4, the range has pushed the coast road out to the water’s edge entirely. Earlier on Day 4, the group visits the Lanyang Museum near Toucheng, a building whose sharply angled, prow-like form was designed to echo the very landscape — mountains, plains and sea meeting in one dramatic geography — that becomes literal a few hours later at the cliffs themselves.

Is Qingshui Cliff a Stop, or Just a View From the Coach?

Whether the group stops at a formal lookout point or takes in the cliffs while travelling along the highway depends on road conditions and the current state of the route on the day. Either way, this section of coastline is one of the more memorable passages of the drive from Yilan to Hualien, and window seats are worth claiming for it.

The 2024 Earthquake and the Cliff Road Today

In April 2024, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake centred off Hualien caused significant damage across the region, including to Taroko Gorge National Park, where roads, trails and visitor facilities were badly affected. Odyssey’s itinerary has been adjusted accordingly, and the Taroko Gorge visit that once featured on this tour has been removed until the park is fully operational again. The Suhua Highway past Qingshui Cliff, further south along the same coast, is a separate stretch of road, but it runs through the same seismically active zone and is periodically affected by landslides and rockfall after significant earthquakes or heavy rain.

Has the 2024 Earthquake Changed This Part of the Route?

The Suhua Highway section past Qingshui Cliff is distinct from the Taroko Gorge road works affected by the 2024 earthquake, but conditions on Taiwan’s east coast roads can change with little notice. Confirm the current state of this stretch of the route closer to departure, in the same way the Taroko Gorge closure is confirmed for each tour.

South Toward Sansiantai and Baxian Caves

Qingshui Cliff is the first, and most famous, of several dramatic coastal features the tour encounters as it works its way down Taiwan’s east coast. The following day’s drive from Hualien to Chihpen brings the group to Sansiantai, a former headland now linked to the mainland by a scalloped footbridge, and to the sea caves at Baxian, where marine erosion has carved chambers into the coastal cliffs further south. Seen together, the three sites trace how the same collision of plate and coastline produces different landforms depending on the rock and the pace of erosion — sheer marble at Qingshui, sculpted headland at Sansiantai, hollowed caves at Baxian.

What’s the Best Time of Day to See the Cliffs?

Morning light tends to favour this stretch of coast, when the sun sits behind the traveller and lights the cliff face directly, and haze off the Pacific is often lighter than in the afternoon. Overcast days are not a loss here: low cloud can wrap around the upper cliffs and add real drama to the scene, even if it softens the long views south along the coast. 

The Marble Coast in the Wider Journey

Qingshui Cliff is a hinge point in the itinerary of the Taiwan Lantern Festival small group tour — the moment the trip turns from the temples, museums and night markets of the northeast toward the quieter, more geological east coast that leads on to Sansiantai, Baxian and eventually Kaohsiung and Tainan. It is a reminder that Taiwan’s history is not only human: the same tectonic forces that produced the island’s temples-worthy mountains also carved this coastline, and travelling it slowly, by road, is one of the more direct ways to feel the scale of that.

For travellers who have spent the morning among museum collections and mountain crafts, the drive past Qingshui Cliff offers something different: a landscape that needs no interpretation, only a window seat and a little patience for the road ahead. It sets the tone for the coastal days that follow, as the tour continues south along one of Taiwan’s most striking stretches of shoreline.