It used to be that after crossing the footbridge at Fulung's beach, you stepped onto a football-field-size
expanse of golden sand. Well, no longer.
Depending on the tides and the height of the waves, stepping off the bridge today could land you in roiling surf well over your head. After the succession of powerful storms in August and September, the beach was largely washed away, leaving a giant question mark hanging over the future of the beach resort.
The hope now is that nature will cooperate and bring the beach back by next summer.
"There's really no way to predict whether the tides will bring the sand back in sufficient amounts. We're going to have to let nature do its work," said Yang Yung-sheng (楊永盛), spokesman for the Northeast Coast Scenic Area Administration, which manages the beach.
Fulung is a favorite destination of Taipei's residents and for the past five years its beach has been the venue for the Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival, which this year attracted up to 100,000 people over three days, according to some estimates. The tourism income that visitors generate during visits to the beach also provides the prime revenue source for the township.
Fulung's beach forms naturally at the mouth of the Shuangshi River, which empties into the island's east coast. Depending on the flow of water out of the river and the ocean tides, the beach's size and
location fluctuates greatly.
"In principle, we try as little as possible to tamper with nature. Besides, any man-made effort to control the ocean at Fulung would be pointless or prohibitively expensive, or both," Yang said.
Yang said that some years the outer beach on the opposite side of the mouth of the river (which the footbridge provides access to) is narrower than during other years. Likewise, the inner beach changes size every season forcing the Ho-Hai-Yan festival to be held on whichever beach is the larger in a given year.
This natural ebb and flow of the beach has meant that alarm bells aren't yet ringing at the coastal administration, though the level of concern about the beach's future is higher this year than at any other time in recent memory.
"This year is exceptional in that the three storms took out the entire beach. We've seen parts of the beach come and go and high tides cover large parts of its area before, but for it to be completely gone is quite worrying," Yang said.
A review will be held in March or April, Yang said, to assess the situation of the beach and make recommendations about which side of the beach, if any, to open to the public. Until then, hopes are set on the northeasterly winds and changing ocean currents during the winter months to return the sand to its original location.
But whether the time and force of the tides will be enough to restore Fulung to its former state is in the hands of nature.
Yang mentioned the beach at Yenliao, Taipei County, which several years ago lost much of its sand to a typhoon and has yet to see most of it return.
"We know the sand is out there, we just don't know whether it'll make it back," Yang said.
"No one comes here in winter anyway," said one woman whose job for the scenic area administration is to serve as custodian of the beach during the week. "And I think I've seen more sand coming back in the last few days."
Looking out at the waves where two months ago there was a pristine stretch of beach, it sounded a bit like wishful thinking.
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