Taipingshan Cuifeng Lake, Yilan County, April 2025

Dawn of Cuifeng Lake at Taipingshan, Yilan County, April 27, 2025

Taipingshan, located in Yilan, is a well-known natural attraction in northern Taiwan. In addition to Cuifeng Lake, the Bong Bong Train, and the beech forests and snowy landscapes of autumn and winter, it has recently gained fame for the serene mountain trails of the Cuifeng Lake Circular Trail. By the time I saw information online about the soundscape of Taipingshan, it had already become a tourist hotspot.

I had previously attempted to record audio at Cuifeng Lake several times but was never satisfied with the results. Recording in Taipingshan on weekends poses challenges—not only do you have to avoid times with human interference, but you also have to contend with the area’s frequent rain. Moreover, since Cuifeng Lake isn’t accessible via public transportation, and I don’t drive, I had to hire a private vehicle to get there. After several failed recording attempts, I began to hesitate about whether it was worth investing more time and money into field recording trips to Taipingshan. For the next one to two years, I didn’t return to record.

This spring, however, things changed. By coincidence, both my family and a friend wanted to visit Cuifeng Lake, so I decided to bring my recording equipment along again. I was fortunate this time—the weather stayed clear, and avoiding human noise was as simple as not recording during the day. In March and April, I recorded the soundscape from night to early morning at the Cuifeng Lake viewing platform and at the western entrance of the circular trail.

This recording was made around 5:20 a.m. in April at the Cuifeng Lake viewing platform. Since Cuifeng Lake itself produces very few natural sounds from animals or plants, and the microphone I used was cardioid directional, I pointed it toward the forest rather than the lake during the recording. This helped avoid having to set the recorder’s gain too high, which would have introduced more background noise.

I originally thought I would be able to record a long stretch of natural tranquility this time. However, compared to my last visit, Cuifeng Lake now had more human-made noise from airplanes flying overhead. Just before dawn, I began to hear the sound of aircraft engines in the sky.

In the recording, you can hear the soundscape of Cuifeng Lake gradually transitioning from night to dawn. In the first half, the sounds are mainly frogs, occasionally interspersed with bird calls I couldn’t identify. Around the eighth minute, faint bird calls begin to appear, followed by more songbirds joining in, as if the forest’s creatures are slowly awakening to greet a new day.