Exploring Kinmen Island

Half-Day Bus Tour

The day was cool and was forecast to remain that way with chance of rain.  What a change from yesterday’s scorcher.  I put on longs and had breakfast of congee, doughsticks and some pastries.

I weighed up the idea of renting a bicycle vs taking the sightseeing bus, taking into consideration the sights which appealed most and the distances.  I opted to try for the bus, provided I could get to it in time.

I got to my local bus stop around 0750 just in time for the bus into town.  It worked too well and I had to wait about 40 minutes for the sightseeing bus on the town fringe.  It was TWD250 for the half day’s transport to various sights including guiding.  Not bad!

First stop was Juguang Tower on the edge of town as a memorial to fallen soldiers.  Surprisingly there was quite a bit of information about local culture such as food and the ubiquitous wind lions (which protect locals from heavy winds which makes agriculture difficult).

From there, we continued to my area, Shuitou village to visit various beautiful homes.  I hadn’t realised that they were open to visitors.  They are managed by the National Parks and free for all to visit, some are on 30 year leases from their owners in exchange for restoration and use as museums.

While my homestay was in traditional Chinese style, the homes open to visitors (and also the school) were of western fusion design.   In one of them, there was substantial information about how Peranakan culture of the people who had migrated to South East Asia.  And a dining table full of very authentic Nyonya food reproduced in plastic model!

The guide spoke of how when the migrants returned to Kinmen, they brought some of their culture and words back.  Eg. in Kinmen people will understand duit and pasar as the words for money and market but not back on the main island of Taiwan.

Next was a Ming village out in the middle of nowhere.  It consisted of a street flanked by one-storey buildings on both sides.

The itinerary included a visit to Wuntai Pagoda but roadworks meant that the big bus was unable to access it.  So we fast-forwarded to Jhaishan Tunnels which had been carved out from the granite mountains into the sea in the 1960s.  They basically allow small navy boats to come inside to be sheltered if an attack were to occur.  It also provides for discrete loading and unloading.

The guide explained that this mountain’s name had been mistranslated from local dialect (Thief Mountain) into Mandarin.  Quite a few local names have been similarly mistranslated as locals didn’t read and write, and the translations were done by Mandarin speakers who spoke a bit of local.

Overall, it was a good morning and a good choice joining the sightseeing bus.  I was surprised the sights were all free without any entrance fees being charged.

Half-Day Independent Exploration

A lunch break and some food was due.  But there was a bus headed to where I wanted to go at 1215, that’s like 10 minutes.  The one after was another hour later.

So I went across the road, scoffed down a hot-dog bun and hopped on the bus for the Beishan area.

The first stop on my independent exploration was the Beishan Broadcasting Station.  One of 48 ginormous speakers still stand.  They broadcasted propaganda to the mainland, with a reported range of 25km.

A nicely constructed track took me back to Beishan town via a few beaches that had anti-landing protection and also the Guiningtou War Museum.  The latter is built on a site of a 1949 battle which saw 5000 lives lost in a 56 hour fight.

Back in Beishan, I saw the remains of a western home  and found the bus to take me back to town more or less straight away.

Back in Kincheng town

Despite all that walking, I was surprised to have spent just more than an hour in the whole Beishan area.  Back in town some 20 minutes later, I treated myself to an oyster fritter and huge red beans on ice.

I was in my lovely homestay around 1515.  I tried to skip dinner in the evening, feeling guilty after the late unhealthy lunch.  The heavens opened with heavy rain, deciding for me once and for all, that dinner was not going to happen tonight.   I staved off my peckishness with some snacks from the homestay’s ancestral hall.