Kinmen- -From Battlefield to Tourist Destination

Many people only think of the Kinmen of the past as a war zone. But the most precious memories which the war left Kinmen are often hidden behind a very ordinary exterior.

Kuningtou, a place where Taiwan's fate hung in the balance, is just a flat, sandy beach; only a stone tablet today quietly marks the spot near Mt. Taiwu where major-generals Chi Hsing-wen, Chang Chieh-yu and Chao Chia-hsiang died on the eve of the August 23rd Bombardment; in Liao-luo Bay, where eight war reporters lost their lives, the waves roll and crash as they have always done.

All these places are either within restricted areas or else are nothing much to look at, so they have not become major attractions for the new wave of tourism. But one place which visitors wishing to search out the traces left by the war should not pass by is the temple dedicated to Colonel Li Kuang-chien.

The temple to Colonel Li Kuang-chien lies near Hsiputou village in the northwest of Kinmen Island, around five kilometers from the town of Chincheng and next to the famous Hill 132. Buses run there. Compared with other temples its location seems particularly desolate. For a kilometer all around, apart from a few peanut fields, there is almost nothing but an empty landscape of yellowish-brown earth, with nothing of the lively atmosphere of most temples.

The temple itself is also very plain, and occupies an area no bigger than a volleyball pitch. In the rather empty-looking temple building there is an altar bearing a wooden spirit tablet, in front of which an incense burner stands. Under a sheet of glass on the altar, a photocopied newspaper cutting is spread out. Other than this, there is nothing to see.

Unlike other temples, this temple's statue does not stand inside, but out in front. And the figure depicted is not a deity, but a soldier in uniform, with a spirited gaze and a martial air. The name written below the statue- -Li Kuang-chien- -is the same as the one which appears in the temple on the spirit tablet and in the newspaper cutting on the altar.

Who was Li Kuang-chien? According to military records, Li Kuang-chien was born in 1917, and graduated from the 16th class of the Central Military Academy. In October 1949 when the communist army landed along the coast of Kinmen from Chiunglin in the northwest to Hsiyitienhung Beach, Li was just 31 years old and was a colonel commanding the 42nd Regiment of the 12th Army. He had just arrived at Liaoluo Bay from Shantou (Swatou), and his troops were exhausted. But the 203rd Division of the Youth Army, which was guarding the shoreline, was unable to hold back the communist forces' attack, and army commander Kao Kui-yuan, seeing that Kinmen was in imminent danger of being lost, ordered the 42nd Regiment to go to their aid immediately.

With the help of other units, the 42nd Regiment finally recaptured Hill 132 in the face of withering enemy fire. But Li Kuang-chien, who commanded the action, and countless of his comrades and opponents, never returned to their units.

The outcome of this campaign not only secured Kinmen, it also secured Taiwan. But the price paid was a terrible one. Local residents say that when the fighting was over, many officers and men were buried where they lay, or even just left where they had fallen, and many could not be identified. Because of this, the local villagers did not dare to build houses in the area. But even so, the villagers of nearby Hsiputou experienced a period of strange happenings.

At night, they would often hear shouted commands, marching boots and the sound of machine guns being made ready to fire, as if large numbers of soldiers were on nighttime maneuvers. But when they looked outside, there wasn't a living soul to be seen- -only an occasional will-o'-the-wisp dancing in the air.

This went on for a long time, until the terrified villagers, at their wits' end, went to the Wangyeh Temple to ask the spirits for help. No sooner had they asked than the temple medium spoke over 100 names, the first of which was Li Kuang-chien's. At that time, local people's relations with the military were not as close as they are now, and the villagers had no idea who Li Kuang-chien was, or what special significance these names might have.

Finally someone suggested that as the noises they heard were the sound of army maneuvers, they might as well ask the military. When they did, it turned out that the more than 100 names, including Li Kuang-chien's, all matched the names of ROC army officers who had fallen in the battle for Kinmen.

The locals thought that if the spirit of Li Kuang-chien was abroad, it might be a good idea to build a temple and venerate him, for perhaps he might protect the village and its people. So they built him a little temple outside the village, about the same size as most shrines to the god of the earth. Strange to say, after the temple was built, the villagers never again heard the sound of soldiers marching at night, and when they asked Li's spirit to help them or to divine the future, they often found their prayers answered. So in 1976 the villagers collected money and enlarged the temple to its present size.

Things and places directly or indirectly connected with the war, such as memorial halls and the sites of battlefields, are all fairly obvious places to visit, and they also provide the basic material around which the future "Kinmen Battlefield National Park" is being planned.

There are also other traces of the battlefield which, although less conspicuous, will not escape the gaze of observant visitors.

Walking along little country roads, one will sometimes turn a corner to see a patch of woodland in which ropes strung with bottles and cans are stretched between the trees. These ropes are warning devices, for if anyone touches them the bottles and cans will jangle loudly together, alerting the guards to come out and check what is happening. If you accidentally touch one of these ropes, it is not so serious, but if you see the characters for "minefield" written there too, then you should be very careful.

Speaking of minefields, visitors must be sure to remember that the mines laid along Kinmen's shoreline have not yet been cleared. Although the island's beaches are very enticing, you should enjoy their beauty from the safety of the road, and not be tempted to stray onto them.

By the roadside or in the middle of fields one can also often see small mounds of earth, about 10 meters across and ringed with sandbags. Some of them are marked with the words "land mines" in large characters. This is where the army temporarily placed mines from areas that were cleared after military tension eased. But the vegetable gardens and peanut fields alongside the minefields show that local people have grown quite accustomed to these things.

Apart from the strings of bottles and cans and the minefields, another feature which underscores the martial character of Kinmen is its anti-paratroop stakes.

In Kinmen's countryside, wherever the land is fairly flat, one can see large numbers of white concrete posts sticking up out of the ground. These posts stand 10 meters apart and number 6000 in all. They are three meters tall and each one has three wire spikes around 10 centimeters long projecting from its tip. The posts are a little unsightly, but because they are arranged in neat rows,they look rather like a carefully drawn grid.

This sight is not one which people from Taiwan or indeed most other parts of the world have seen before, and so it naturally arouses visitors' curiosity. The posts were put up around 1981 at the suggestion of General Sung Hsin-lien, the then commanding officer of the Kinmen Defence Command, to hinder paratroop attacks by the Chinese communist forces.

The communists did not send paratroops to invade Kinmen, and so these stakes have stood for many years without their effectiveness being put to the test. Even so, they have not been left completely idle, for they have been used as part of a piece of installation art.

Two years ago, a young artist from Kinmen named Hsu Hung-wen, a graduate of the fine arts department at Chinese Culture University, suddenly had the idea of incorporating these anti-paratroop stakes into a piece of environmental installation art. After getting permission from the landowner, he decorated 100 of the stakes as bright yellow butterflies, calling the piece "Butterfly Paratroopers- -Paratroop Scarecrows." Thus one can say that the stakes have at least served some purpose.

Some farmers have also suggested that the stakes could support trellises for growing grape vines or gourd creepers, but nobody has actually used them in this way. Some of the stakes stand on farmland or other private land, and since the lifting of martial law, the question of people's rights over them has not yet been settled.

Apart from its history as a battlefield, Kinmen also has its own unique folk culture.

In ancient times Kinmen was called Wuchou, and as early as the 4th Century AD people from China's central plains fled here to escape the incursions of northern tribes. The island was settled over the following centuries, and in the 14th Century, in the reign of the first Ming dynasty emperor Hung-wu (ruled 1368-1398), Chou Te-hsing, the Marquis of Chianghsia, built a city wall and moat on the island to protect it against Japanese pirates. This town was called "Golden Gate City," and from then on the name Kinmen (which means "golden gate") became current.

At the end of the Ming dynasty Cheng Cheng-kung (Koxinga) came to Kinmen before going on to Taiwan. After Kinmen became part of the Ching empire, a naval base was established on the island. Under the Republic, during the war with Japan, Kinmen fell into enemy hands in 1937, and did not come back under the control of the ROC government until 1945.

Because Kinmen was settled early, it bears many traces of the past. There are 21 listed historical monuments scattered all over the island. The only Grade I monument among them is the "Chiehhsiao Arch," commemorating Chiu Liang-kung's mother, located in East Houpu Street in the center of Chincheng.

The arch was built at the order of the Ching emperor Jen-tsung (ruled 1796-1820) to honor the widow of Chiu Chih-jen for her chastity and for raising and educating her son alone. Her son was the great general Chiu Liang-kung who defeated the Japanese pirates. The arch is built of stone and has four pillars, three arches and three levels. A plaque denoting the imperial decree stands at the top, and one of the cross-beams is finely carved with a relief of two dragons playing with a pearl.

Wentai Pagoda is a monument of a kind not often seen by the people of Taiwan. This solid five-storey granite pagoda was built under the first Ming emperor by Marquis Chou Te-hsing to provide ships at sea with a conspicuous marker by which to navigate. It is located in the southwest of Kinmen at a place with an excellent view. This 600-year-old structure is the only one of Kinmen's ancient pagodas which still survives. It came through the August 23rd Bombardment completely unscathed.

There are many other ancient monuments all over Kinmen, such as the Tsai family ancestral temple at Chiunglin, Kuihsing Pavilion, Chen Chen's tomb, Wuchiang Academy and Chenweiti House.

Apart from Kinmen's old houses and other ancient buildings, another feature which adds to its character are the fengshiyeh ("wind lions" or "wind gods"), which are stone lions put up to ward off destructive winds.

Wind lions are not unique to Kinmen, but among Kinmen's 153 villages, there are 62 well-preserved wind lions. This density compares with Penghu's shikantang- -inscribed steles and plaques which serve the same purpose as the wind lions.

Why should there be wind lions on Kinmen? It is mainly because as an island, Kinmen is exposed to powerful winds which cause soil erosion and crop damage. In past times, the people living here were plagued by the wind blowing the soil from their fields, and they called upon these ferocious magical beasts to scare off all kinds of evil spirits. Thus the wind lions became the guardian angels of the people of Kinmen.

According to historical records and archaeological evidence, wind lions first appeared on Kinmen around 300 years ago, in 1683. The youngest wind lion was put up in 1972 at Hsi-kuoshan Village. The smallest wind lion is only 22 centimeters high, while the tallest measures 380 centimeters.

In winter, the prevailing winds on Kinmen blow mainly from the northeast, while in summer they blow from the southwest, so wind lions are mainly found in villages in the northeastern and southwestern parts of the island. Villagers pray to the wind lions in the hope that they will control the winds and drive out evil. The largest number of wind lions in any one area is in Chinsha Township in the northeastern corner of Kinmen, which has 39 wind lions.

Wind lions not only protect villages. Some stand in front of temples, some next to water, and some even stand guard on top of or next to pillboxes.

Kinmen's wind lions are not hard to find. If you follow the main road around the north of the island, you can see many standing by the roadside; or else you can look around the villages of Chinsha Township, such as Yangchai (which has four wind lions), Houshuitou or Shamei (which have three wind lions each). Just ask any of the locals where to find them.

If even this seems like too much trouble, you can also find wind lions created purely as works of art, around the streets and alleyways of Chin-cheng and elsewhere. These were created by local sculptor Wang Ming-tsung, who, after studying wind lions all over Kinmen, chose eight of them as his models, to which he added creative touches of his own. His decorative ceramic wind lions are fired from Kinmen's own clay. Their artistic beauty and strong local character have attracted many heads of government departments and high-ranking military officers to buy large numbers of them as gifts for visiting dignitaries.

The Kinmen Folk Village at Shanhou Village in Chinsha Township is a well-known tourist attraction. It comprises a complete and beautifully-ornamented group of traditional buildings in the Southern Fukienese style.

The houses of the Folk Village were built as a clan residence for the Wang family by the rich merchants Wang Kuo-chen and his son Wang Chin-hsiang. These natives of Kinmen grew rich trading overseas in their early years, but still remembered their old homeland. To let the rest of their clan benefit from their success, they built this group of 18 large houses two rooms deep as residences for members of the Wang family.

The houses were built over a period of 25 years, and were completed in 1900. They stand in three rows running down the slope of a hill, and are all built of red bricks and tiles around timber frames standing on stone bases. With their saddled roofs and swallowtail ridge ends, the delicate carving on the wood and stone of their facades, and their lively chiaochihtao (decorative ceramic panels showing scenes from historical stories in relief), they are a fine example of the Southern Fukienese building style.

The old houses had been poorly maintained over the years, but in 1979 the government had them repaired and a wall built around them with a ceremonial arch, and named the site "Kinmen Folk Village." Descendants of the Wang family still live there.

Many people from Kinmen went overseas in past years to set up in business, and not a few of the successful ones returned to do something for their native land, so that apart from the Folk Village, one can often see buildings with a western flavor in Kinmen's villages. One example is Teyueh Hall in Shuitou Village, which combines a traditional Chinese courtyard layout with western-style facades.

In fact, if you take a stroll through any village, you will find most of the old Fukienese-style houses still standing and still lived in. Outside one house we saw many green uniforms hanging up to dry, for the family living here takes in washing from soldiers at the local army base. Elsewhere, a wall bore the half-scrubbed-off remnants of anticommunist slogans.

On today's post-martial-law Kinmen, a few people in some villages have torn down their traditional houses and replaced them with multi-storey "western" style houses. If in any village on Kinmen you see a snow-white modern house towering over a crowd of red-brick traditional buildings, this is evidence of the transformation which Kinmen is going through.

When it comes to the subject of what gifts to take back home, one is sure to think of Kinmen kaoliang. Since Kinmen's state-owned distillery was obliged to stop selling its products directly to the public to avoid engaging in unfair competition with private enterprise, Kinmen's pure, silky-smooth aged sorghum spirit has been in short supply, causing its price to rocket. In recent times especially, it has been hard to get hold of at any price.

This is because since Kinmen Distillery stopped direct sales, apart from licensed wine and tobacco dealers who get a fixed quota, every Kinmen resident also gets a fixed quota. With demand outstripping supply, shops serving tourists have no choice but to buy in at a higher price from local residents, and this extra expense naturally drives up the market price.

A bottle of aged kaoliang which used to sell for around NT$900 is now marked up to nearly NTS2000, and this price is very firm. You won't get a discount however many bottles you buy, for if you aren't willing to pay that price, there are plenty of others who are.

Kungtang candy is another of Kinmen's famous products. It is made mainly from peanuts. Kinmen's sandy soil makes its peanuts grow large, crunchy and rich in oil, so that the candy made from them is especially tasty.

To make kungtang, the peanuts are first fried, hulled, sorted and ground into a powder. The powder is then mixed with malt sugar and fine granulated sugar, and formed while still hot into a cake of crunchy peanut candy. This is dusted with more peanut powder, pressed flat and cut into chunks to make tasty kungtang, which is neither greasy nor sticky.

Kinmen is not as colorful or varied as other tourist areas. Now that the veil of restricted access which obscured it for so many years has been lifted, we can see its simple, unadorned face, a face which has already disappeared from Taiwan. With the advent of development and tourism, how can the people of Kinmen, the investors, the tourists and the government work together to "limit" such development in a way which can both preserve Kinmen's original character and adequately serve the needs of tourism?

Some people warn that things must not be allowed to go on as recently, when many tour bus operators brought extra vehicles to Kinmen, causing the number of buses on the island to leap to over 200. With only a thousand or so tourists visiting the island each day, these operators finally had to send many of the buses back to Taiwan unused. Others caution that now that the island is open to tourism, care must be taken that the hotel industry does not expand too quickly and cause a divergence between price and quality, and throw the market into chaos.

But what we fear most is that the destruction wreaked by development will cause Kinmen, which survived the fires of war unbowed, to lose forever its reputation as a "fairy island."

[Picture Caption]

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Now that Kinmen has been opened for tourism, the troops garrisoned there place few restrictions on visitors' freedom of movement except near major military installations. Pictured here are tourists birdwatching on the beach near Tsuti Dam.

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(right) If you see minefields or piles of earth ringed with sandbags, ke ep well away.

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From details of Colonel Li's life, visitors can get an idea of the ferocity with which the battle for Kinmen was fought.

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Painter Fang Hsiang once commanded the unit responsible for taking prisoners of war at the battle of Kuningtou. He painted this scene of enemy troops' surrender from memory.

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These stakes to prevent paratroopers landing are one of the unusual features of Kinmen's countryside.

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The family living in this old house takes in washing from the garrison troops. The clothes hanging up to dry are a colorful sight.

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Driving, cycling or strolling along Kinmen's leafy avenues in the glow of the setting sun is a real joy.

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Kinmen's own fresh oysters make oyster soup, oyster rolls or oyster noodles into a hearty meal.

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(right) Kaoliang spirit and old red-brick houses are part of Kinmen's character, yet we don't often think of them together.

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You have to get out and about on Kinmen if you want to see how local people really live. Pictured at left is an old man carrying articles used for spirit worship. At right, a vegetable patch irrigated with water drawn from a well.

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New buildings going up next to an abandoned pillbox capture the spirit of today's Kinmen.

（right） If you see minefields or piles of earth ringed with sandbags, ke ep well away.

From details of Colonel Li's life, visitors can get an idea of the ferocity with which the battle for Kinmen was fought.

Painter Fang Hsiang once commanded the unit responsible for taking prisoners of war at the battle of Kuningtou. He painted this scene of enemy troops' surrender from memory.

These stakes to prevent paratroopers landing are one of the unusual features of Kinmen's countryside.

The family living in this old house takes in washing from the garrison troops. The clothes hanging up to dry are a colorful sight.

Driving, cycling or strolling along Kinmen's leafy avenues in the glow of the setting sun is a real joy.

Kinmen's own fresh oysters make oyster soup, oyster rolls or oyster noodles into a hearty meal.

（right） Kaoliang spirit and old red-brick houses are part of Kinmen's character, yet we don't often think of them together.

You have to get out and about on Kinmen if local people really live. Pictured at left is an old man carrying articles used for spirit worship. At right, a vegetable patch irrigated with water drawn from a well.

New buildings going up next to an abandoned pillbox capture the spirit of today's Kinmen.