Silver Islet

Silver Islet

On the vast reef flat north of Shiyumen in the Xisha Islands, there is a small reef island commonly referred to as "Yinzhi" (Silver Islet). It is said that the name comes from the many silver items found here during the Qing Dynasty, while another story suggests that a shipwreck in the late Qing period left silver behind. The reef flat where this Silver Islet is located is called "Observation Beach" on foreign maps. Silver Islet is a small sandbank covered in grass but with no trees, occasionally visited by seabirds. With an elevation of just 2 meters, most of it is submerged during high tides. The terrain of this sandbank is highly changeable, making it difficult to represent accurately on nautical charts.