Kinmen (金門) is a group of small islands off the southeastern coast of China. Far away (116 miles) from Taiwan but within view of mainland China, it had been a fierce fighting ground between Communist China and Taiwan from late 1940's through the Cold War era and remained under Taiwanese military administration until the early 1990's, when the tension between China and Taiwan eased.
I went on a tour organized by my college alumni association for a three-day-two-night visit to this once dreaded no-man's land for the first time.
Tunnels and fortresses everywhere are signs that Kinmen had been synonymous with war-zone for nearly half a century. There are over 50 miles of tunnels dug underneath the island's rocky terrain, caves for command centers/ammunition storage/meeting halls, etc., and waterways for supply ships. There is a rampart on a tidal island, cannon hide-outs on the hills, machine-gun embankments and tank stations all around.
And there are villages—yes, people had been living here long before (and after) the mid-20th-Century Chinese civil war made it a hellish battlefield. They are traditional South China cluster housing with familial courtyards, and Western style "trophy mansions" commissioned by overseas Kimeners who made it out there after emigrating and working hard for years in Southeast Asia.
With hardy soil, limited water supply, gusty seasonal winds, about the only agricultural plants Kinmen can grow are whit and sorghum, and they make the best out of it by turning them into high quality Gaoliang Wine (高梁酒) that now takes up 80% of Taiwanese hard liquor market and generates $400 million annual revenues for the islands.
During the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958 (八二三砲戰, nine years after the first one, 古寧頭戰役 in 1949 when Communist China tried massive invasion of the islands and failed), over 480,000 artillery shells fell on the islands in 44 days. The ingenuity of Kimeners came to work again after the crisis, converting the deformed/defused bombs into sharp, durable kitchen knives that became yet another famed commercial success for Kinmen.
Though I was never stationed in Kinmen during my military service in Taiwan in the early 1980's, I saw on this trip the same weaponry—anti-air machine guns and cannons—my military unit was equipped with in mainland Taiwan; I also heard anecdotal stories from some of my fellow travelers—many of them about my age—who had served in Kinmen during those times: One almost got shot on his first day in Kinmen when he went out for relief and got stopped by a sentry demanding password and he forgot what it was; another served as an artillery commander and lost his partial hearing permanently due to constant exposure to the cannon gun firing. And we all heard of the gruesome "midnight slaughtering" by enemy seal men who came ashore at night and cut-throat a whole platoon at sleep, and the massive shootings by disgruntled soldiers against their own officers or fellow soldiers...
As I remarked one evening at the banquet table in the five-star hotel we stayed at, it was unthinkable the peace and prosperity we would have today at Kinmen versus the paucity and precariousness we had four decades ago... May the former continue for a long long time, and the latter never come again!
Happy Thanksgiving!
* For more photos and narratives of the trip, go to
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