Kinmen 2016

This time last week, my family and I were at Greater Kinmen Island, Kinmen County’s biggest island and where the majority of the population resides. Which I’ll simply refer to as Kinmen（金門） here for ease of reading and writing.

Kinmen is located east of China’s Xiamen（廈門）City, roughly 2 kilometers apart at some locations. Kinmen suffered from extensive shelling by the Communists during the first and second Taiwan Strait Crises. Therefore there are many military sites there.

I’m no military history buff, so I can’t say that the various tanks, bunkers, cannons and so on that we so really excited me. However, I’ll freely admit that I’ve been woefully ignorant of the hardship the people of Kinmen, and I’ve learned a lot yet not nearly enough on this trip.

On to a lighter subject, Kinmen is quite famous for its’ Kaoliang Liquor. The liquor is locally distilled and apkays a big part of Kimen’s economy. I don’t understand liquor so I couldn’t tell but apparently it’s of a very high quality. From the single shot glass of it I had, I could definitely it was very strong (58%)! And I thought soju (roughly 20%) was already very strong.

Kinmen is also home to many traditional Min style buildings.

We even got to experience walking through Civil Defense Tunnels. I can’t even begin to imagine all the hard work that went into building these tunnels!

I don’t understand architecture either (then what DO you know Shawn?) but it looked pretty magnificent to me.