In thirty years the Queen's Head at Yehliu has lost nearly half its neck

On the Yehliu headland, on New Taipei's north coast, waves and wind have worn the sandstone into mushroom-shaped rocks banded in rings of yellow-brown. The best known, the Queen's Head, loses 1 to 2 cm from its neck each year to weathering. In the scenic area administration's long-term measurements, the neck was 220 cm round in 1994 and 116.59 cm in October 2024.

Yehliu is a bus ride from Ruifang, and getting anywhere in the hills and on the coast of New Taipei usually means changing there. The Pingxi Line branches off here, a single-track line that follows the Keelung River valley upstream through Houtong and Shifen to its end at Jingtong. The carriages are small. Out of the window there is the river first, then tunnel mouths cut close against the rock.

Jiufen is in the other direction, up the hill by bus from Ruifang. It was a gold-mining settlement, and its streets were cut into the slope: Jishan Street runs across it, Shuqi Road drops straight down in stone steps. Teahouse windows face the sea. Shops sell taro balls and caozaiguo, a green rice cake made with a wild herb.

At Shifen the tracks run straight down the old street, between the shopfronts. The line is at its busiest of the year around the Lantern Festival, when New Taipei holds mass lantern releases in Pingxi and Shifen. When no train is due, visitors stand on the rails brushing wishes onto the four sides of paper sky lanterns, then light them and let go, and the lanterns rise slowly past the power lines. Before a train comes in, everyone steps back under the shop eaves, and the train squeezes slowly past the stalls.