Panjin famed for plants, bird life

Every fall at Shuangtaizi Estuary State Natural Reserve in Panjin, miles of marshland weeds that hug the shoreline turn from pale red to a brilliant scarlet.

From a wooden bridge that zigzags hundreds of meters deep into the protected wetland, visitors can view Saunders' Gulls, an endangered species of white birds with black beaks.

The plant that dramatically changes colors each fall is the Suaeda glauca Bunge, better known as jian peng weed.

Jian peng weeds blossom in April and May on the salty shoreline, turning brownish red by September before turning bright red to the delight of visiting tourists.

The red weeds became a food staple during the lean years of 1958 through 1961. People stuffed their steam breads with the plants.

Today, the plants have become a popular item on the menus of Panjin restaurants. With its slightly bitter taste, jian peng is considered a health food.

Panjin is also widely known for its tasty river crabs and high-quality rice.

Tourists flock to Panjin each year for its food and scarlet shores covering about 80,000 hectares.

The region is famous as "a pearl on the golden ring of Bohai Bay".

Panjin also is famed for its sea of reeds and more than 200 species of birds, including red-crowned cranes and black-beak gulls.

In late March and early April, the black-beak gulls fly from the South to the Shuangtaizi Estuary wetlands that provide them an abundance of food.

They nest and spawn under low clusters of red weeds that hide them from predators.

Joint research by Chinese and Japanese scientists in 2004 found that the black-beak bird population in Panjin had increased to more than 6,000 - a fivefold increase from 20 years ago.

Those numbers account for 75 percent of the world's population of that species, making Panjin the largest breeding ground for black-beak birds.

(China Daily 08/03/2009 page8)