Kinmen Island is only 10 miles from the coast of the Chinese mainland. It was the outpost closest to the mainland that the KMT held after fleeing the mainland in 1949. As a result of its position and symbolic value, it has been the buffer between China and Taiwan. Much bombing and even a ill conceived invasion from China occurred. The island had a large number of troops -- 200,000 at one point -- and still has an army base of about 2000. Some of the sites that we visited were left from that time. An entrepreneurial knife maker from Kinmen (Maestro Wu) has even used the steel from shells from China to forge into very nice knives - not exactly ploughshares, but we like the idea of them being recycled for peaceful purposes -- such as preparing food.
Kinmen Island is also famous for its noodles...
A Taiwanese friend encouraged us to travel to Kinmen soon after our arrival in Taiwan. She brought us many brochures and talked of her love for the island and its traditional villages and Western style houses built by Kinmen immigrants to Malaysia and Singapore. She accompanied us and made arrangements for us to stay in the bed and breakfast of a friend of hers. The trip coincided with a trip for Claude to consult on fresh water production issues. The people of Kinmen (like the people of the Marshall Islands) get their fresh water from lens wells (pools of fresh water floating on denser salt water) and collection of rain water. These sources are not enough to sustain the fresh water needs of the island and the water supply has to be supplemented with water shipped in from Taiwan. Claude is working with them to see if technology he brought to the Marshall Islands might be feasible.
So, Susan and Yi-Hung flew in on Saturday after his work was finished. Kinmen is subject to fog at this time of the year so they had an extra hour circling in the air before they landed. The fog was so dense at times that it felt like they were suspended in dense cotton. At one point, Susan looked out and thought, "How would you do this without instruments to help find the horizon?" While we were in the air circling, Yi-Hung explained how many Chinese tourists enter Taiwan via Kinmen. She also explained how many people are talking about building a bridges between the close islands to facilitate tourism. It seems that China and Taiwan are in a bidding match for the heart of Kinmen. Right now many Chinese take boats to Kinmen and then fly to Taipei. The airport was busy, clean and decorated in the granite that is the primary substance of which the island is made. It is quite beautiful, clean and welcoming. Yi-Hung had made arrangements for a car, so we took off. The island is shaped like a dog-bone or a barbell -- the airport is on the Taiwan side of the "handle" of the barbell and Claude's hotel was in the middle of one of the weights where the major city on the island is located. We met Claude at his hotel and had lunch and toured some of the major sites of the island. As we drove around we saw the ubiquitous monster tour buses ferrying Chinese tourists from one site to another. They seemed too big for the small roads and the small island.
The roads are in excellent shape and flowers are planted along all the major roadways. It is at once civilized and wild. The years that the army was on the island no people who were not from Kinmen could visit here, so many birds started using it as a resting place during the cold Chinese winter. While we were driving we saw many kinds of birds that are just indigenous to Kinmen and China.
Because the island experiences many strong cold winds from China, they have erected many small and large wind lions to protect the island and its people from the danger of these strong winds. Some of them look fierce, others look more benevolent - they were all delightful.
