Guangxi · Read the Eruptions in the Cliff
Weizhou Island Volcanic Coast (涠洲岛)
A volcanic island in the Gulf of Tonkin, off Beihai in Guangxi, where the sea has cut the layered ash beds into cliffs and planed them into a wide rock platform. The platform is the attraction, and it is under water for much of the day.
Quick Facts
The Short Version
| What it is | A small volcanic island reached by ferry, with cliffs and wave-cut rock platforms round most of its edge |
|---|---|
| Where | In the Gulf of Tonkin, off Beihai in southern Guangxi, about an hour by fast ferry |
| Listed | A 5A scenic area, named for Nanwan and Crocodile Hill on the south side |
| What the pictures show | Wucaitan, the five-colour beach, on the east side. A separate platform with its own gate, and the one most visitors photograph |
| The rock | Beds of volcanic ash and fragments, laid down flat, now cut through by the sea |
| The controlling factor | The tide. At high water the platform is submerged and there is nothing to walk on |
| Getting round | Electric buggies, hired scooters and a ring road. The island is small |
| Time needed | One night. A day trip is governed by the ferry timetable rather than the tide |
Why Go
Layers, and the Timetable of the Sea
1. The cliff is a record of the eruptions
Volcanic islands are usually explained with a diagram. Here the explanation is the cliff itself. The face in the picture at the top of this page is banded horizontally from bottom to top, and each band is material thrown out in an eruption and settled flat: coarse layers where the fall was heavy, fine ones where it was ash. Nothing has folded or tilted them since, so they read from the bottom upwards in the order they were laid down.
The platform under your feet is the same beds, cut off level by the sea. Where it has been planed through a low dome the layers show as concentric rings, like the contour lines on a map or the grain in a sawn log, and one of the pictures below is nothing but that. Two sets of joints run through the rock at roughly right angles, so the platform breaks into rough rectangles with green algae growing along every crack, and the effect at a distance is of a paved floor.
The cliffs are still going. There is a notch cut into the base of the face where the waves reach at high water, and above it the rock overhangs with screwpines hanging off the lip. The platform is what is left after the cliff retreats, so the two are the same process seen at two stages.
2. The sea decides what time you can look at it
Every photograph on this page was taken at low water. That is not a coincidence in the picture library. At high tide the platform is under a metre of sea, the algae and the pools and the bedding rings are all invisible, and there is a strip of wet sand and a cliff. A visitor who arrives at the wrong hour has come to look at something that is not there.
So the planning question is the tide table rather than the season, and it is worth checking before the ferry is booked. Wucaitan faces east, which makes low water at dawn the best combination available and the reason so many people are standing about on the rock at six in the morning. The southern side, around Crocodile Hill, is a different shape of coast: a bay inside the remains of a crater, with cliffs that can be looked at from above rather than walked on, which makes it the sensible choice when the tide is wrong for the platform.
Being honest about the weather is part of this too. These photographs are flat and grey, which is what this coast is like for a good deal of the year. The island is marketed with turquoise water and white sand, and it does have that on some days. Under cloud it is a geology lesson on a brown rock shelf, which is more interesting than it sounds and less photogenic than the posters.
The catch. The island is small and popular and the ferry is the bottleneck: sailings are limited, they sell out in season, and they are cancelled outright in rough weather, which can strand a day trip into an overnight stay. Sites are individually ticketed, so the platform, the crater bay and the rest are separate purchases. The rock is slippery wherever the algae grows and there is nothing between a visitor and a fall. Most of the accommodation is recent and basic, and the island has taken more building in ten years than it took in the previous century.
Orientation
An Hour by Sea, Then a Ring Road
The island sits out in the gulf and is reached by fast ferry from Beihai. It is small enough to drive round in well under an hour, and the usual arrangement is an electric buggy, a hired scooter or a hotel shuttle. The sights are spread around the edge: the rock platform at Wucaitan on the east side, the crater bay and Crocodile Hill on the south, beaches on the west, and the old Catholic church inland.
Because the platform depends on the tide and the church and the crater do not, the workable plan is to fix the platform to the low-water window and fit everything else around it. Visitors who do it the other way round tend to arrive at Wucaitan in the middle of the afternoon and wonder what the fuss is about.
Practical
Things Worth Knowing
Check the tide before the ferry
Low water at the platform is the trip. Everything else on the island can be moved around it.
Book the return sailing early
Ferries are limited and sell out, and weather cancels them. Leave slack at the end.
Wear something with grip
The algae on the rock is as slippery as it looks, and the platform has pools and holes in it.
Stay a night
A day trip spends most of itself on boats and is at the mercy of the timetable rather than the tide.
Timing
When to Go
| Season | The case for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| October to December | Dry, clearer air and calm seas, which is the most reliable window for sailings | Cooler water, and the island is busy at the start of October for the national holiday |
| March to May | Warm, green and before the main crowds | Damp and often overcast, which is the weather in these photographs |
| June to September | Hot, with the brochure version of the water on the good days | Typhoon season in the Gulf of Tonkin. Ferries are cancelled and plans do not hold |
| January and February | Quiet and cheap | Grey and windy, and services on the island run at a low ebb |
Context
An Island Made of Its Own Eruptions
Weizhou is a volcanic island in a shallow tropical gulf, built up out of material erupted through the sea floor rather than carried there by a river. The eruptions were explosive because rising magma met sea water, which is why so much of the island is beds of ash and fragments rather than solid lava flows, and why those beds are soft enough for the sea to cut through them at the rate it does.
That softness is the reason the island is worth a geology-minded visit and also the reason it is vulnerable. Cliffs of consolidated ash retreat quickly, and the coastal platform is a record of how much has already gone. Coral grows on the shallow fringes around the island, which is unusual at this latitude and is monitored, and it has suffered from the same combination of sediment, fishing and visitor numbers that has affected reefs elsewhere in the South China Sea.
The human history is short and layered on top. Fishing villages, a nineteenth-century French Catholic mission that left a church built out of blocks of coral rock, and then, from the 2000s onwards, tourism, which is now the island’s main business. The building that came with it is visible everywhere. Anyone who wants the version of this coast with very little on it should look at the cliffs rather than the villages.
Nearby
Other Stops on the Same Trip
Spot · about 400 km northwest
Detian Falls (德天瀑布)
The limestone falls on the Vietnamese border, and the other side of Guangxi.
Spot · about 450 km northeast
Huangyao (黄姚)
An old town of stone lanes and banyan trees inland from the coast.
Spot · about 550 km southeast
Wuzhizhou Island (蜈支洲岛)
A polished resort island off Hainan, and a useful contrast with this one.
Where to Base
Beihai (北海)
Beihai is the mainland port for the island and a seaside city in its own right, with a surviving street of colonial-era arcaded shophouses and a long soft beach. It has an airport and high-speed rail, and it is where the ferry leaves from, so at least one night here is usually forced by the timetable.
Treat the city as the buffer. Weather cancels sailings with little warning, and having a night in Beihai at each end turns that from a ruined trip into an afternoon in an interesting old street.
Experiences
What You Can Actually Do Here
On site · one morning
The platform at low water
Out to the east side for the low-tide window, with the layers, the pools and the algae, before the buggies arrive.
On site · half day
The crater bay and the church
Crocodile Hill and the southern cliffs, which work at any state of the tide, plus the coral stone church inland.
Guided · 4 days
The Guangxi coast
Beihai, the island and the older ports along this shore, with the geology and the trade history read together.
Go for the rock. The cliffs are a stack of eruptions you can read from the bottom up, and the platform is the same layers cut off flat and picked out in green. Check the tide before anything else, stay a night so the ferry timetable does not run the trip, and do not expect the turquoise water in the advertising. Under grey sky, which is most of the time, this is a better geology outing than it is a beach.
The Gulf of Tonkin, Timed to the Tide
Getting this right means lining up a ferry, a bed and a low-water window, and the first two are usually booked without reference to the third. Tell us your dates and our local team will build the island day around the tide, keep a night in Beihai as insurance against the weather, and add the parts of this coast that most visitors never see.