Ready for anything: Matsu

The islands feature quaint fishing villages along beautiful coastline, with a sprinkling of military compounds all around. Matsu gives visitors fresh sea air, uncrowded space, delicious food, and a unique look at Taiwanese history and culture. It’s a lovely and intriguing destination for getting a breather from the big city.

Sitting directly off the coast of China’s Fujian province, Matsu comprises Lienchang County (連江縣), with 18 islands and four townships: Nankan (南竿), Peikan (北竿), Chukuang (莒光) and Tungyin (東引). Matsu’s business, government and cultural center is located in Nankan.

Matsu has managed to hold on to much of its own culture, while slowly buying into the 21st century - although 7-11 is still not to be found, and Starbucks is surely unheard of!

Matsu formed a front-line defense for the Republic of China when the government of the Republic of China relocated to Taiwan in 1949. Harking back to that time, you can still see a sporadic array of huge-character signs conveying reminders like “Discipline and Efficiency” to encourage social order, and “Sleep with Your Rifle as Your Pillow,” in case the mainland Chinese military decides to visit.

Matsu remains well carved out for battle; plenty of soldiers are on active duty there now. Even so, when martial law ended and the islands opened their doors in 1992, formerly closed-off military sites like forts and tunnels started welcoming the public, paving the way for a newborn tourist industry.

Take the many-channeled Beihai Tunnel (北海道坑), for instance — a truly amazing site. Dark, dank and massive, yet incredibly well concealed, the Beihai Tunnel is 18 meters high, 10 meters wide, and 640 meters long.

There’s a 700-meter railed walkway inside that takes about 30 minutes to navigate, which is only possible when the tide is out. The tunnel connects to the ocean, and in days gone by, kept around 100 small craft safe from bad weather and the eyes of the enemy.

Thousands of soldiers worked for more than 800 days to complete this engineering feat — and, minus a bit of dynamite, they used nothing more than simple hand tools to dig through the solid granite. It’s unimaginable, really.

Another interesting site is Tunnel 88 (八八坑道). Previously used by an army tank company, this 264-meter tunnel, also dim, humid and roughly carved into a granite mountain, was turned into a distillery in 1988 and made for storage of rice wine and kaoliang spirits.

The tunnel’s year-round natural temperature of 17-20 degrees Celsius makes it ideal for this purpose. Tunnel 88 kaoliang liquor is readily available in Taiwan — now when you see it, you’ll know where it came from.

There are two airports in Matsu, on Nankan and Peikan islands. Most people fly into Nankan and make a day-trip to Peikan (15 minutes by boat). But perhaps the opposite would be best, as Peikan, and especially Cinbi Village (芹壁村), is very cool. Cinbi is nestled on the side of a green hill, next to the sea, looking directly across the Taiwan Strait to China.

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