Kinmen

Kinmen - UPDATE: Not so long ago I undertook an extensive trip to Taiwan during which I also spent three days on Kinmen and explored it pretty much exhaustively. I visited almost two dozen separate sites on both Kinmen islands and gathered plenty of material and took hundreds of photos. This will eventually result in a whole string of new full-length chapters with proper photo galleries. But it's going to be a lot of work and will take time. So please bear with me ... -------------------------- Taiwan consists not only of the main island and a few off-coast smaller islands (such as Green Island ) but also two archipelagoes lying close to the Chinese mainland and far from the rest of Taiwan, namely the Matsu group of islands ca. 130 miles (210 km) north of the main island, and Kinmen, 170 miles (277 km) to the west of Taiwan but only a few miles from the territory of its arch-enemy, the People’s Republic of China (PRC). (See also the separte chapter History of Taiwan .) From the late 1940s, especially in the late 1950s and until about the mid-1970s the PRC frequently shelled Kinmen from the mainland … and the Taiwanese shelled back. Large underground fortifications were hence hewn into the rock of Kinmen to provide shelter not only for soldiers but also tanks, communication centres, ammunition depots and even harbours for boats. Today many of these military installations have been opened to the public and museums have been added too. These include Zhaishan Tunnel , a ca.