The Jingzaijiao Salt Fields

Salt was made along this flat, windy stretch of the Tainan coast for centuries by letting seawater evaporate in shallow pans. Jingzaijiao is the oldest surviving example of the tile-paved type, where the floor of the crystallising pan is laid with broken pottery shards so that the salt forms on a hard surface and can be raked up clean. The field went out of commercial use along with the rest of Taiwan's salt industry, which ended in 2002, and was later restored as a working demonstration. The pans are a grid of shallow squares reflecting the sky, with wooden rakes and conical heaps of salt, and a few kilometres away a white mountain of stockpiled salt has been left standing.

What you actually see

• The tiled pans - crystallising floors paved with broken pottery shards.
• Raking salt - drawing the crystals into heaps with a long wooden rake.
• The reflections - the flooded grid mirroring the sky when the sun is low.
• The salt mountain - a white heap of stockpiled salt further up the coast.

When to go

October to April, when it is dry and not punishing to stand in the open. Salt forms best in hot dry weather, so the pans look their best in the drier months, and late afternoon light on the water is the reason most photographers come. This is exposed coast with no shade and a hard wind through the winter.

Honest expectations

It is a small site and thirty minutes covers it unless you take part in the raking, a paid activity aimed largely at families. There is no shade at all and the glare off the water and the salt is hard on the eyes. Reaching it without a car is slow. The nearby salt mountain is more theme park than industry.

Nearby

The Qigu lagoon and its oyster racks are on the same stretch of coast.