Kinmen Island

This was one of the most fascinating stops of our trip, I thought. We flew to this island Kinmen (pronounced more like Jinmen), also known as Quemoy. It has an amazing history. I also need to return here someday with Eric to enjoy the winter bird migrations. The island is located just a mile from China. If I understand correctly, when the communists were taking over all of China, they began taking over the islands as well. But this little island was able to stand firm and hold off the Chinese army. It is an incredible story. There are memorials and war sights and signs of the war still all over that we got to see. I felt a very special feeling there that is just hard to put into words, but I found the whole place touched my soul.

Jhaishan Tunnel

 We were able to tour this tunnel, where they hid loads of naval boats like the one shown below. Sadly, I have forgotten all the cool facts about how big the tunnel is and how many boats it protected.

This man was our tour guide for the days we spent on the island. He had been a boy there and had amazing memories of the war and knew all kinds of cool information. He liked practicing his english, so we non-Chinese speakers had a chance to learn some great stuff!

 This type of roof was called swallow tail I think.

So much detail...

 I think these next few photos are of a historical European colonist community. Curse my horrible memory! I want to say Dutch maybe?

 cool waterspouts

and round brick columns

 These little tour buses took us all around some war sights.

This is the skyline of China viewed from the coast of Kinmen. Below is this huge speaker used to broadcast anti-communist propaganda to China (that's what I understood anyway).

 This bullet-ridden wall is a poignant reminder of the reality of war.

I think this small memorial marks a mass gravesite.

 The kids in our group were sent to host families for the 2 nights we stayed on Kinmen. This was very scary for Dan, but ended up being fine. Meanwhile, the moms got to stay at this awesome B&B.

 The moms were anxious for a little shopping getaway, so our guide arranged for this little van and we got to visit a couple of places. It was a little tight, but that's part of the adventure!

 The signs explain it better than I can, but one of the places we shopped at was a knife factory/shop. The signs tell the story of artillery shells being turned to knives.

 !!!

Looks like there are still plenty of shells to work with!

 I thought the whole idea of using these shells to make art and knives and turning the violence into usefulness was really cool. I guess you could argue that knives are violent too, but these knives spoke more of art than of violence to me.