Dongyin Lighthouse 东引灯塔

About Dongyin Lighthouse

The lighthouse stands on the hillside above Lehua village and was planned from 1902 and completed in 1904 under John Reginald Harding of the Chinese Maritime Customs engineering office, at a time when treaty-port trade was expanding and Western-style lights were being placed along the China coast. Its immediate trigger was the loss of the P&O steamer Sobraon on rocks near Dongyong in 1901, together with the growth of shipping after the opening of Sandu'ao. The light, an incandescent mantle burner fuelled by kerosene, was first lit at sunset on 18 May 1904.

The tower is a white cylindrical brick structure whose gallery railings and lens-machinery support are in cast iron of late-nineteenth-century European industrial character. Around it survives a small compound divided into keepers' quarters for Chinese and foreign staff, an office, animal pens, and a powder magazine with a fog-gun battery. Renamed Dongyin Lighthouse in 1954, it was listed as a third-grade historic site in 1988 and raised to national monument in 2016; the heritage bureau notes it is the designated monument farthest from the main island of Taiwan. A small exhibition hall above the lighthouse opened in 2020 with historic photographs.

What to look for

• The 1904 white cylindrical brick tower on its cliffside terrace
• The cast-iron gallery railings and circular lens-machinery support inside the lantern
• The surviving keepers' compound: Chinese and foreign staff quarters, office, animal pens, powder magazine and fog-gun battery
• The small exhibition hall above the lighthouse, opened in 2020, with old photographs licensed from Harvard University Library
• The Lienu Yikeng sea gorge and the Yixiantian cleft close by

Location & getting there

Getting to Dongyin Lighthouse

Check which interiors and courtyards are accessible. Active places of worship and protected monuments may have different visitor rules.

• Search for 东引灯塔 with 金门、马祖（旅行通行另行管理） and 连江县马祖列岛东引乡.