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The Kinmen Islands, just offshore of the Chinese mainland, are known for strong winds. We visit their rich culture that has been influenced by the mainland while being nurtured by the winds. Far from the main island of Taiwan is a group of islands facing the Chinese mainland across a narrow strait. At the same time, strongly influenced by mainland China, they have developed a rich culture of their own. Located kilometers west of the main island of Taiwan, the Kinmen Islands are home to , people. Statues in the shape of the Wind Lion god, called 'Feng-shi-ye,' are revered as island guardians. Born in Fujian Province, Ma's grandfather brought his noodle-making skills with him when he moved to the Kinmen Islands. The island's strong winds and sunlight are essential factors in the production of these mainland-born noodles. The sun-drying time is adjusted delicately according to the strength of the wind and the weather. Thanks to the strong winds, these mainland-related noodles have now become a representative flavor of the Kinmen Islands. Young oysters are attached to the stone pillars laid out in the ocean and harvested when they have grown. After being rolled out thinly, the mixture is shaped by hand into a peanut candy bar called 'gongtang. Now, there is a woman who is trying to promote interest in the Feng-shi-ye wind lion god with fresh ideas. She is trying to understand the thoughts of her ancestors that are embodied in the wind lion god statues.

Kinmen - An Island Culture Nurtured by the Wind

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Kinmen Islands, Taiwan — On a warm, still evening in early June, Jason Lu parks his electric scooter near a beach on the small Taiwanese island of Kinmen. Lu, who wears a black T-shirt and glasses, pulls a bag out from under his scooter seat then heads down to the beach. Lu bends down to pick up a worn plastic bottle that has washed up beside his foot and puts it in his bag. Taiwan and Hong Kong use traditional Chinese characters. Nor has he come to marvel at the lights that now glitter in the dusk from the skyscrapers of the Chinese metropolis of Xiamen, less than 10km 6. When Lu is not working as an administrator at a local tourism office, he contributes to keeping Kinmen clean by picking up rubbish. Lu was born and raised on Kinmen — the main island of a small archipelago of the same name which is home to about , people. For many in Kinmen, Xiamen, a city of four million, represents a vibrant nightlife, abundant shopping and commercial opportunities, and home to friends and family. In comparison, the main island of Taiwan often feels distant, lying some km miles east of Kinmen across the Taiwan Strait. He also sees the waste problem as symbolic of the tensions between China and Taiwan. Although people from Kinmen can visit China and Chinese family members can visit Taiwan, the ferries connecting the isles to Xiamen are these days largely devoid of Chinese tourists — a stark contrast to the pre-COVID years when around one million Chinese would visit annually — their absence leading to a 50 to 80 percent loss in revenue for some Kinmen businesses. Beijing has long considered Taiwan to be part of China and in recent years, Chinese incursions into Taiwanese waters and airspace have grown more aggressive, leading to concerns of a possible invasion. Last time tensions flared was during the to crisis in the Taiwan Strait when Chinese mobilisation activities and missile launches in the waters around Taiwan led to widespread fear of war. However, this hostility goes back much further than the s, and few have felt this more directly than Kinmenese. Their sleepy islands had become an unrecognisable military stronghold, many knew someone who had been killed or maimed by Chinese shelling which had turned homes into rubble and the isolation had disrupted ties to the outside world. This left the Kinmense with deep scars but also instilled a strong sense of community and identity, one they see as distinct from the main island of Taiwan — with whom they share a government — and separate from China — with whom they share the same neighbourhood. Those decades also seared a shared understanding into their collective memory. He picks up a small plastic container in the sand and pops it into his bag. For him, the waste is also a reflection of what the longtime feud means for Kinmen. Wu Tseng-dong, a tall, energetic blacksmith sporting jeans, a denim jacket, cap and protective gloves, rearranges a collection of shears in his cluttered Kinmen workshop. Wu, who was born in the late s, is old enough to remember the conflict over the Kinmen Islands that took place between the s and s. In , after two decades of civil war, the Chinese Communists under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong had driven out the Chinese Nationalists under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek from the Chinese mainland. Only the conquest of a series of islands in the Taiwan Strait — above all Taiwan island — stood between the Communists and an absolute victory. Taking Kinmen would provide a launching pad for further military campaigns in the strait. To counter this, the Nationalists turned the Kinmen isles into a fortress. Hilltops were fortified with lookouts, beaches were mined and covered with anti-landing barricades while bedrock was blasted away in several locations to make way for naval and military installations. The Nationalists imposed martial law in which entailed a nighttime curfew for the local civilian population who were also prevented from arriving or leaving thus cutting them off from the rest of the world. Throughout the s, tens of thousands of soldiers arrived from Taiwan to reinforce the island, causing the military population to surpass the local one. In , and , Communist and Nationalist forces clashed around the isles, but with American equipment and support the Nationalists were able to repulse the attacking forces. The fighting was accompanied by heavy Chinese artillery shelling. When the fighting subsided in , leaving hundreds dead, reduced shelling by China continued for the next two decades, with fewer casualties, interspersed with periods of intensification, and occasional bombarding of China by Taiwanese forces on Kinmen. He remembers his frightened parents rushing the family into bomb shelters at night as Chinese shells rained down from above, and the next day emerging to assess the damage. Wu would then run off with friends to find scrap metal from the exploded shells. They made a game out of it; whoever collected the most would win. By then, about a million artillery shells had struck the Kinmen islands. Back in his workshop, Wu disappears for a moment behind a large furnace before returning with a Chinese artillery shell in his arms. Wu collects shells that can still be found all over Kinmen and uses the steel coverings to craft into kitchen knives to then sell. But by the s, soldiers from Taiwan serving on Kinmen began to request his father for ornamental and kitchen knives that they could take home as tokens of their military service. Wu took over the workshop in the s and decided to focus almost exclusively on making knives. Today, Maestro Wu, as both the man and his shop are known among locals, is a familiar figure in Kinmen renowned for his smithing. Sometimes, he would swap childhood stories with Chinese tourists. He was struck by how similar their experiences were to his own. Chinese tourists from Xiamen also experienced propaganda leaflets — albeit from the Nationalists — falling on their city. Wu has found growing up on opposite sides of the front line to not be a source of friction but rather as fostering a similar desire for peace. He believes it is the responsibility of both sides to move away from confrontation. He misses the conversations he had with Chinese visitors, and their absence has made him more economically dependent on the Taiwanese market. By turning Chinese war material into Taiwanese kitchen tools, Wu believes his work shows it is possible to forge a more conciliatory narrative about China and Taiwan. Initiatives that can bind the two together are desperately needed these days, he believes. Back when Al Jazeera first met Wu in May , he was certain that the tensions would blow over. Now, he is not so sure. He wears a blue vest with the circular county government emblem of a white roof and blue background. In the s, Taiwan had one foot in authoritarianism and another in the democratic process while enmity with China had reached dangerous heights. Intense popular pressure had compelled the powerful Nationalists, organised under the Kuomintang or Chinese Nationalist Party, to loosen their grip on the uncontested power they had held in Taiwan since the end of the civil war. The constitution was amended and the first free parliamentary election took place in while the first free presidential election was slated to be held in March On the geopolitical stage, then-President Lee Teng-hui, who had been in office since , had shifted Taiwan closer diplomatically to the US. In September , a year-old Li arrived in Kinmen from Taiwan as a conscript. He saw how the liberalisation that was rolling through the main island had also reached Kinmen. Martial law was lifted in in the archipelago, ending more than 30 years of isolation, and the presence of soldiers had been reduced. However, the many changes in Taiwan caused a stir in Beijing. When President Lee visited the US in the summer of , it was the last straw for the Chinese leadership. The optimism Li had witnessed quickly evaporated as the missiles coupled with amphibious landing exercises in November brought back traumatic memories of the clashes in the s. The entire Kinmen military apparatus was put on high alert, according to Li, and he was regularly sent on coastal patrols where he could see large troop mobilisations around Xiamen. Li therefore found himself in need of a mental refuge where he could distance himself from the thundering of war drums. He found such refuge one day in a small family-owned cafe. Still, Tsui-hung had a calmness about her that put Li at ease. So he decided he had to do something different to stand out. Little by little he got to know them, and they got to know him. As the presidential election drew close, the crisis only deepened. The Chinese government announced live-fire drills near Penghu — a Taiwanese island group. Panic spread in Taiwan, people moved money abroad and hoarded supplies, the stock market teetered and many clamoured to get flights out of Taiwan. However, the dynamic began to change as US naval units started to arrive in the Taiwan Strait in support of Taiwan. On March 23, the Taiwanese people elected the incumbent Lee as president and in April, the US and Japan reaffirmed their bilateral security alliance. China withdrew its forces and the missiles stopped falling in the sea. The status quo settled once more with Taiwan left to continue as a self-governed territory without being an independent country. The couple is now married and have three children. They live on Kinmen where Li also works as a university lecturer while Tsui-hung ran a cafeteria until recently. Taiwanese companies and institutions are facing political pressure and cyberattacks from China. Meanwhile, Taiwan is allocating more money to its military, extending its compulsory military service from four months to one year and has expanded its diplomatic engagement with the West. As in the past, the first shots have been fired near Kinmen. Earlier this year, the ban on Kinmenese liquor was abruptly lifted. Sudden bans on Taiwanese goods like baby food, agricultural products and fish have become more frequent in recent years. Li says Kinmen County has tried to come to an agreement with the authorities in Xiamen to collect and dispose of the rubbish, but final approval from Beijing and Taipei is hard to come by these days. Ma Tsong-tin, 32, manages a noodle business in Kinmen that primarily exports products to Xiamen and often visits the city to nurture his business relationships. A few years ago, he and his business contacts would talk about deeper cooperation between China and Taiwan. Today, it is the fear of war that dominates discussions. Above all, he decries the consequences of the lack of Chinese tourists on his business in recent years. The absence of Chinese tourists has also affected Rebecca Tung, who co-owns a restaurant on Kinmen. Tung, who is in her early 40s, is considering entering local politics to put more focus on what can be done on the Taiwanese side to improve relations with China. For example, she sees the Taiwanese leadership receiving former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi in August as intended provocation. At the same time, she sees the Taiwanese government as sometimes treating Kinmen as a vestige rather than an integrated part of Taiwan. Taiwushan, just metres feet above sea level, offers a view of wheat and sorghum fields, woods, villages and the coastlines of central and eastern Kinmen. It is this small size, he says, that has played a key part in shaping Kinmenese identity. People know each other, help their neighbours and look after their streets, temples and villages. It is a place where the pace of life is unhurried and people rise and go to sleep according to the cycle of the strong subtropical sun. His friends, all high school classmates in the s who have worked on Taiwan island but ended up back in Kinmen, agree. Although Taiwan and Kinmen have been part of the same territory since , the experiences in both places have been markedly different, Shui points out. Even today, most activities move indoors after dark. This stands in contrast to Taiwan where night markets often keep people out until late in the evening. Nevertheless, Shui and his friends believe that Taiwan should do more to normalise relations with China. The councillors called for the withdrawal of the few thousand remaining soldiers and to support the construction of a bridge linking Kinmen and Xiamen as part of a larger effort to turn the islands into a demilitarised zone that can serve as a place for dialogue between China and Taiwan. Li Haolun, 25, the chief executive of the local branch of the Democratic Progressive Party, was involved in the discussions that led to the drafting of the letter. Some Kinmenese in favour of the petition argue that in an era of advanced military capabilities, Kinmen has lost much of its previous strategic importance and that consequently there is no need for soldiers to remain on the island. Yao-Yuan Yeh, the professor, acknowledges that Kinmen has lost much of its strategic significance over the years, but not its symbolic value. He will not rule out that a day may come when a Chinese president will need a victory in the Taiwan Strait but does not want to risk an all-out invasion of Taiwan. And, according to him, a Chinese conquest of Kinmen would be a boost to a Chinese leader after past unsuccessful attempts to capture it. It is home to a string of surveillance stations that monitor activity in the surrounding sea. Twenty-two-year-old university student Yang Shu-wen does not give much importance to the writings of local politicians, she admits, as she puts on a blue summer jacket and ties her long black hair up into a ponytail. It is Friday evening and Yang is standing outside a 7-Eleven with two friends. Yang is in favour of de-escalation but believes that Kinmen best contributes to it by not withdrawing Taiwanese soldiers or furthering integration with China. Zhou is not interested in politics. The friends are constantly checking Facebook. They are members of a group that searches for and posts about a natural night-time marvel around Kinmen — blue lights in the sea. According to Zhou, chasing the algal light-emitting phenomenon is a fun distraction in his otherwise fairly uneventful routine on Kinmen. Entertainment options are limited, and employment opportunities are lacking, they say, especially after the flood of Chinese tourists became a trickle. For that reason, they all plan to move to Taipei after they finish their university studies. Yang, who studies communications, has already secured a job as a translator after the summer. This alga has properties that cause it to emit a neon blue light when there is disturbance in the water around it. The three then sprint towards a walkway above a rocky shore where a large group of young people have already gathered and are staring intently down at the dark waves crashing against the rocks, their phones at the ready. She says that the escalating tensions in the strait have often made her consider whether she should look for jobs further away than Taiwan. Yang hopes that by that time friendlier tones will be exchanged between China and Taiwan so that when Chinese people come ashore again to Kinmen, it will be as visitors. By Frederik Kelter. Published On 15 Sep 15 Sep Sponsored Content.

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