Xiapu Mudflats
The Largest Tidal Mudflat System In China; A Working Kelp And Laver Aquaculture Coast In Xiapu County, Fujian, And One Of The Country'S Best Known Photographic Landscapes · Xiapu, Fujian
Xiapu is four hundred kilometres of indented Fujian coast where the tide goes out a very long way and leaves behind the largest expanse of mudflat in China - and a working seascape that photographers have been travelling to since the early 2000s. What they come for is the aquaculture: thousands of bamboo poles set in ranks for kelp, rectangular frames for laver seaweed, drying racks, nets, and the narrow sampans that thread between them, all of it arranged by people who were thinking about harvests rather than composition and produced something extraordinary anyway. At dawn from the hill above Beiqi the flats turn to sheets of gold and silver cut by tidal channels; at dusk from Xiaohao or Dongbi the poles stand in colour. It depends entirely on the tide. Come at the wrong hour of the wrong day and you will look at grey water, or at grey mud, and wonder what the fuss was about.
Xiapu County, Ningde, Xiapu, Fujian, China
THERE IS NO GATE AND NO OPENING TIME - these are working tidal flats and most viewpoints are free and open at all hours, which is necessary because the usable windows are around sunrise and sunset. A few managed viewpoints charge a small fee. THE TIDE TABLE, NOT THE CLOCK, DECIDES WHETHER THERE IS ANYTHING TO SEE: you need low or falling water coinciding with the golden hour, which happens only on certain days of the lunar month. Boats depend on tide and weather, and typhoon season from roughly July to September closes things without notice.