Another of the island's main attractions is Beauty Cave (美人洞), named for the young daughter of a Ming loyalist who fled China to escape Manchu forces. He and his daughter hid out in this catacomb of coral grottoes, surviving off wild plants and fish until the day the father died. Local inhabitants later discovered the young girl weeping over her father's body. But rather than leave his side, according to the legend, she bit her tongue in half and took her own life.
The most remote of these grottoes is, yet again, famous for a tragic reason. It was the sight where, in the last century, locals disposed of unwanted baby girls. It's now marked by a shrine built in the girls' honor.
But ghost stories and tragic tales are hard to think of when the sun kisses the coral shores of Liuchiu and winks from the tops of waves. At the island's peak, on a clear day, it's possible to trace Taiwan's coastline from Kaohsiung in the north down the Hengchun Peninsula in the south. The living coral beneath the sea and the coral rock inland on the island mean adventure-seekers could spend several days getting happily lost. The beauty of Liuchiu is as beguiling as its ghost stories.
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