Kinmen bed and breakfast manager Steve Lee was still a child when China intermittently shelled the Kinmen archipelago. - ST
KINMEN (Taiwan): Lifting a rug in the guestroom, Kinmen bed and breakfast manager Steve Lee unveiled something underneath – a trapdoor leading to an underground bunker.
The door, which opens to a flight of steep steps, is just wide enough to fit one person at a time.
The bunker can accommodate up to 10 people comfortably, though it is chilly and damp.
“Tourists think this is pretty cool, but it was part of our daily lives back in the day,” Lee told The Straits Times.
“At first, it was scary, but we eventually got so used to hiding inside that we would all sing pop songs together there to pass the time.”
The 52-year-old was still a child when China intermittently shelled the Kinmen archipelago – which is controlled by Taiwan – to pile psychological pressure on its troops.
Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province, and has never ruled out the use of force to reunify with it.
The shelling finally ended in 1979, but the sounds of the bombardment have since been seared into his memory.
“My older brother’s classmate was killed by one of these shells,” said Lee, who also runs two local theatre groups. “We can say we really don’t want war to happen, because we’ve been through it before.”
Kinmen, which is made up of 12 islands and islets, has repeatedly been on the frontlines between Taiwan and China, partly due to its geographical location. It is situated off China’s coast, with one of its beaches just 3 km across from the southern Chinese city of Xiamen.
Kinmen, as well as the Matsu archipelago further up north, are among the islands that remained in the hands of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government that fled to Taiwan from mainland China after its defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
The First Taiwan Strait Crisis broke out in 1954 when the Republic of China (Taiwan) built defensive structures and placed tens of thousands of troops on Kinmen and Matsu. China responded with artillery bombardments.
In 1958, at the height of the Cold War, China attacked Kinmen and Matsu in a key battle that marked the beginning of the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. The United States, concerned that the conflict could lead to Communist China’s eventual takeover of Taiwan, sent its forces, including a large naval contingent, to aid Taiwan.
Regular shelling from both sides of the strait carried on until Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
Today, Kinmen is quiet and calm, and has turned into a weekend tourist destination for those with an appetite for war history.
Besides the myriad of underground bunkers and tunnels that spread across the islands, the beaches also draw visitors who flock there to take photos of the anti-landing metal spikes poking out of the sand. Popular souvenirs include knives crafted from used artillery shell casings.
However, with cross-strait tensions running at their highest in decades, these war relics bear special meaning for Kinmen’s 142,000 residents, and serve as a reminder of the vulnerability of their home.
Over the past three years, China has made regular military incursions into the waters and airspace near Taiwan. Last September, Taiwanese troops on Kinmen’s Shi Island shot down a Chinese-operated civilian drone, following weeks of complaints about incursions by unmanned aerial vehicles from China.
Experts have long speculated that Kinmen and Matsu would be the first to fall in the event of a Chinese invasion.
“If Beijing attempts an outright invasion of Taiwan... and Kinmen and Matsu are also targeted, it’s unlikely that Taiwan would be able to hold on to those islands because of the sheer proximity to the Chinese mainland,” said Assistant Professor James Lee from Academia Sinica in Taipei.
But that also means that the islands have strategic significance. “Kinmen’s geographic position enables early warning and detection of PRC (People’s Republic of China) preparations for an attack on Taiwan,” Prof Lee said.
Despite living under the constant threat of an invasion from their giant neighbour, Kinmen residents like taxi driver Huang Mei-li, 62, remain unfazed.
She recalls the horror of seeing bullet holes puncturing the walls of her village house as a child. But today, she is hoping for the return of the big-spending Chinese tourists who used to visit Kinmen in droves via a 30-minute ferry ride from Xiamen.
These daily ferry services were shut down in 2020 due to the pandemic, wiping an estimated NT$6.4 billion (S$279 million) from Kinmen’s tourism industry. The ferry links only partially reopened earlier this month ahead of the Chinese New Year season, for Kinmen residents and their Chinese spouses.
“Look at how quiet it is now, there’s not a single person around,” she said, pointing to the deserted Yangzhai Old Street, a tourist spot featuring 1960s-style shops and buildings. “This place used to be filled with visitors, but business is so tough now.”
Before the pandemic, Kinmen welcomed around 2 million tourists in 2019, with 40 per cent of them hailing from China.
Yorke Wu, 38, whose new guesthouse Narrative is only two months old, is also anxious that the lack of visitors will persist in the months to come.
He noted that Taiwanese travellers have also stopped visiting Kinmen after borders reopened last October, choosing to visit countries such as Japan and Thailand instead.
War is the last thing on Wu’s mind.
“Some travellers always think it’s so scary to come to Kinmen, but once they arrive, they realise how everyone here is so calm,” he said.
Geopolitical tensions are worrying but they are out of his control, he added, opting to focus his energies on his passion.
After quitting his tech job in the northern city of Hsinchu a few years ago, he decided to return to Kinmen to open a bed-and-breakfast place, which he refurbished by hand from a centuries-old house.
“I wanted to go back to Kinmen because that’s where my roots are,” he said.
“Nobody wants war – all of us just want to go on with our lives and do what we want to do.”
