🏝️ Lalu Island

Lalu Island is a small island in Sun Moon Lake, Yuchi Township, Nantou County, Taiwan. The island used to be much bigger, separating the lake into a part shaped like crescent moon and another part shaped like a round sun. When the island was still bigger, people lived on it; in fact, the locals called it "Pearl Mountain"(Chinese: 珠仔山 or 珠嶼; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Chu-á-sū / Chu-sū) ever since the Qing dynasty. Under Japanese rule, the island was renamed "Jade Island" , and in the 1930s, the Japanese built a dam that raised the water level in the lake and almost entirely flooded the island. After Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government moved to Taiwan in 1949, the island was renamed Kwanghwa Island. In 1999 the island shrank as portions sank during the 1999 Jiji earthquake, which also destroyed a wedding pavilion constructed by the local government in 1978.