Yehliu is a sandstone cape on the north coast of Taiwan carrying hundreds of stone mushrooms, and the whole field is one process caught at different stages. Every cap is a concretion, a lump of sandstone that lime hardened on the seabed while the rock below stayed soft. Spray, salt and wind then eat the stem away until it gives. The park sorts the rocks by exactly that: no neck, thick neck, thin neck, broken neck. The four forms stand mixed across the field, so a wide young cap and a snapped stump can sit a few paces apart. The famous one is the Queen's Head. A rope funnels everyone into single file for a turn at the one spot where crown, chin and thinning neck line up into a profile, and you get a few seconds at the front. The candle rocks nearby each carry a shallow groove circling their stone flame, cut by rain rather than by the sea.
Past the rock field the path climbs to the open end of the promontory, where there are no railings, only a red line painted on the rock between you and the dark boulders the waves break over. On a windy day the spray carries all the way up to the path. This is the sea that is thinning every neck in the park, and here you watch it work from a few metres away. At low tide the outer third opens up, and you walk out onto honeycombed rock and a wave-cut platform. From March to May the wooded neck of the cape does something else entirely: birds that have just crossed open sea drop exhausted into the scrub, more than 300 species logged on this small headland. Nobody in the queue for the Queen looks at them. Her neck loses thickness every year and will go. A younger rock with a ponytail profile has already been chosen to take over, and a replica cast from a 3D scan stands by the gate, so people can pose with her without touching the original.