Spousal Unit and I had an opportunity to spend a few months in Taiwan in the late ’80 while working for a large Three Initial Company. Taiwan is a country of great natural beauty, intense industry, an strong work ethic, and friendly people with good humor. They have a complicated and diverse opinion of their neighbors to the west.
Today WBLOTT visits Kinmen, a small Taiwanese island just a 1.2 miles from mainland China. Kinmen is home to one of Taiwan’s 9 national parks.
(both maps) By Guss – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2958718
A Little Background
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. It is located at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. The territories controlled by the ROC consist of 168 islands with a combined area of 36,193 square kilometres (13,974 square miles)… With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries.
Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the island around 6,000 years ago.
The ROC maintains its historical claims to all of the South China Sea Islands. They are also claimed by five other claimants, namely the PRC, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei…. The United Nations considers the South China Sea to be “international waters” and does not acknowledge any of the South China Sea Islands as “true islands”. The acknowledgement of these islands as “true islands” is crucial because the definition of “islands” would justify the creation of an exclusive economic zone around them, which can be used to cut off international shipping lanes and to acquire natural resources such as oil which lie beneath the ocean.
Kinmen is one of 22 administrative districts in Taiwan, with a population of 127,723 and the 4th highest Taiwanese population density (2,777.91/km2) .
Semi-sequitur: Population Density
Wikipedia By Our World in Data – https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-density
Kinmen National Park
The Kinmen National Park is a national park in Kinmen, Fuchien Province, Republic of China.
The park was established in 1995, three years after martial law was lifted in the county.
The park covers an area of 35.29 km² or around a quarter of Kinmen County area. It is divided into five areas, which are Taiwu Mountain, Kuningtou, Gugang, Mashan Hill and Lieyu.
Due to its subtropical climate and low human population, the park becomes the place for migratory birds during autumn until spring. As many as 319 species of bird have been sighted in the area.
The Jiangong Islet is a tidal island in Jincheng Township, Kinmen County, Fujian Province, Republic of China.
The island has an area of 500 m2. The island is connected to main Kinmen island by a causeway which only appears in low tide. Numerous incidents of visitors trapped on the island when the tide was wrong have occurred since the island opened to visitors.
By YuTK – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0Wikipedia / Photo By rheins, CC BY 3.0
Chaste Maiden Temple
Since we are in Kinmen, let’s visit the Chaste Maiden Temple. It holds an important place in the cultural, historical, and spiritual life of Kinmen.
Chaste Maiden Temple’s real name is “Chastity Temple.” It is dedicated to Wanxiangu (Fairy Wang), who was originally called Wang Yulan and came from Xiamen. It has been said that one day when Wang went to collect oysters along the coast at noon, she was […] assaulted and then drowned in the ocean. Her body drifted to the coast of Gueshan, Lieyu, and was later discovered and buried by soldier Liu, a local marine soldier. Afterwards, she appeared in people’s dreams and explained what had happened to her. The stationed soldiers and locals all felt for her and thus raised money in 1956 to commission the 81st Division to build a temple for her. The Temple became a place that offered spiritual support for the stationed soldiers and local villagers at the time.
Chaste Maiden Temple was visited by many and seemed to grant whatever was requested. After reconstruction and expansion, it has turned into how it is today, and became a famous tourist attraction, attracting many people to come and pay tribute to the fairy or make wishes. But remember, unmarried couples and single men are considered taboo as it is more suitable for married couples to visit. If your wish is granted, make sure to show your gratitude to the Temple with offerings.
Ms. Keim looks at the possibility of Kinmen, with its proximity to mainland China, easing tensions between the two countries. Oddly, the story of the Chaste Maiden has morphed over the years to soften the tensions. [ed. note: her article provides a detailed, in-depth, and fascinating look at Kinmen]
The following excerpt from her article focuses on the shifting narrative of the Chaste Maiden Temple.
So far I have spoken mostly with the middle-aged and old on the island. They seem comfortable, like many of their counterparts on Taiwan, with ambiguity, with being neither officially independent nor reunified with the mainland; the important thing is that life is much better than it was, and the status quo should be maintained. I wonder if the younger people in Kinmen will be like those I had spoken to in Taiwan proper. There I had quizzed “Strawberries”—the privileged younger generation, “soft and easily bruised,” as their elders huff—about whether they felt Chinese, or could envision a unified future with China. “We are huaren [ethnic Chinese], but there are huaren all over the world,” a 20-year-old college student in Taitung had said. “Singapore, for example. We’re different from the mainlanders; we live different lives.” It was mostly young people who occupied Taiwan’s legislature in the spring of 2014, during the Sunflower Movement, to protest what they saw as a dangerously close trade pact with China. Where they were concerned, this marriage—if indeed it was that—was best ended in divorce….
I am back on Kinmen, this time on Little Kinmen, or Heroes’ Isle, the smaller of the two main islands, and I am burning incense at the grave of a young woman called Wang Yulan. More officially, she is known as the “Chaste Maiden.” Kinmen is dotted with shrines to the unknown dead of the chaotic war years; this is one of the better-known. The grave, a disconcertingly fresh-looking large swell of earth next to a little temple, holds a female corpse that washed up nearby in the summer of 1954. According to Harvard historian Michael Szonyi’s portrait of Kinmen, Cold War Island, the dead woman’s spirit told her story thus through a local medium:
My surname is Wang, and my given name is Yulan. I am from Xiamen, aged seventeen, from a poor family. . . [While] I was gathering clams at the seashore, brigands from the Zhu-Mao soldiers [i.e., Zhu De and Mao Zedong; in other words, soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army] surrounded me, [intending to] shame me. . . [I] tried every measure to resist. But the bandits’ bestial conduct was impossible to predict. . . [They stripped] me naked and threw me into the sea.
“Are you married? You can ask her for sons,” says the old woman who sells spirit money and incense, encouraging me to buy more. … The woman’s son, Mr. Hong, who looks to be in his sixties, is sitting to one side of the little temple, and I ask him about the introductory plaque at the temple’s entrance. It now makes no mention of “bandits.”
“Yes, that’s what it used to say, ‘Zhu Mao bandits,’” says Hong. He squints at the engraved black stone, which looks polished and fairly new. “Here, it says ‘Year of the Republic 84, so, 1995. That’s when it was changed.”
“Now it just says ‘lawless persons’?” I say, reading.
“Yes.”
I ask him about the change in Wang Yulan’s story: about 10 years ago, she reportedly declared, through another local medium, that she wanted to go back. She was not the only ghost to change her mind. Perhaps it is an indication that some people here want to be reunited with China?
While visiting Kinmen Island, we noticed that there are almost no Google street views from mainland China. Let’s check out where street views do and do not exist.
Imagining the Fairy Wang
We told AI the story of Fairy Wang and the Chaste Maiden Temple, and received some fascinating visualizations.
