Lienchiang County: The County Farthest from Taiwan, and Closest to the Cold War

30-second overview: Lienchiang County is one of the two “Fujian Province” counties currently administered by the Republic of China. It has 4 townships, 5 main islands, and 36 affiliated islands, with a total area of 28.8 square kilometers. Nangan is about 50 kilometers from downtown Fuzhou, only 9.25 kilometers from the nearest point on the mainland at the Beijiao Peninsula, but more than 200 kilometers from Taipei. After the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, “Lienchiang County” was split in two: the county seat remained in Fujian Lianjiang on the Communist side, while the ROC county government retreated to Nangan. From 1956, it entered a warzone administration system that lasted 36 years: curfew at 9 p.m., buildings capped at two stories, and Matsu residents needed entry-exit permits to go to Taiwan. On November 7, 1992, warzone administration in Kinmen and Matsu ended. In 2012, Matsu passed a referendum to establish a gambling zone, Taiwan’s first successful local referendum. Thirteen years later, no casino has been built. Today, 13,646 people live here, and among the third generation in Bade, Taoyuan, the Matsu language has lost 94% of its speakers.

Looking North from Nangan’s Ridge, Fuzhou Is 16 Kilometers Away

If you stand on the ridge above Jieshou Village in Nangan Township and look north, on a clear day the outline of downtown Fuzhou rises above the horizon.

From Nangan to the nearest mainland coastline, the Beijiao Peninsula, the straight-line distance is only 9.25 kilometers. Push farther inland to downtown Fuzhou, and it is about 50 kilometers away¹. Turn back south toward Taiwan proper, and Taipei is more than 200 kilometers away in a straight line; the Taima ferry takes 8 to 10 hours to roll from Keelung Harbor to Fu’ao Harbor on Nangan.

The geographic fact of Lienchiang County is this: it is nearly thirteen times closer to mainland China’s Fuzhou than to the capital of its own country.

But this county is called “Lienchiang.” In the People’s Republic of China’s Fujian Province, there is also a “Lianjiang County,” whose county seat is Fengcheng Town downstream from Fuzhou. It was taken over by Communist forces in the final summer of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. The ROC Lienchiang County Government withdrew to the Matsu Islands then, and reestablished the county government on Nangan in August 1953². One county was split into two halves: one half remained on the Chinese Communist Party side, and the other became a county of Taiwan. Among Taiwan’s 22 counties and cities, this is unique.

Lienchiang County does not belong to Taiwan Province. Together with Kinmen County, it belongs to “Fujian Province.” This province remains one of the ROC constitutional structure’s two provinces, although the provincial government was already downgraded to a nominal status in 1998, and in 2019 the Fujian Provincial Government was formally de-tasked, with its operations taken over by the Executive Yuan’s Kinmen-Matsu Joint Services Center³. But on ID cards, in household registration systems, and on maps, Lienchiang residents are still people of “Lienchiang County, Fujian Province.”

To understand this county, you first have to set aside the intuition that “an island must belong to the country nearest to it.” Lienchiang is a county of Taiwan, but it has never been Taiwan’s geography.

The 7,900-Year-Old Liangdao Man Predates Confucius by Millennia

In 2012, while the ROC military was carrying out construction on Liang Island north of Dongyin Township, workers unearthed two complete human skeletons.

The archaeological team led by Chen Chung-yu named them “Liangdao Man No. 1” and “Liangdao Man No. 2.” Mitochondrial DNA comparisons showed that Liangdao Man No. 1 shared maternal ancestry with Taiwan’s Atayal and Amis peoples; he may have been among the earliest ancestors of the Austronesian peoples⁴.

Carbon-14 dating of the Liangdao Daowei archaeological site places it at 7,000 to 8,300 years before present. In 2023, the Ministry of Culture designated it as Taiwan’s 11th national archaeological site, and also the earliest Neolithic site currently found within Taiwan’s territory⁵.

Liang Island itself is a military stronghold, and civilians cannot land there. The archaeological project had to negotiate access windows with the ROC military, and soldiers stood guard during excavation. A 7,900-year-old human skeleton was guarded for more than 70 years by a Cold War military restricted zone. That contrast itself is Lienchiang County’s historical compression.

Liang Kejia’s Song-dynasty Sanshan Zhi already recorded “Gantang,” an old name for the Matsu Islands; a stone inscription at Daqing Temple in Tieban Village, Nangan, reads “Zhongtong jiaochao, twenty strings,” referring to Zhongtong paper money of the Yuan dynasty, proving that Nangan already had settlements in the Yuan period⁶. Eastern Fujian fishers settled on different islands according to their native places: Dongju and Xiju originally belonged to Changle County, while Dongyin and Xiyin originally belonged to Luoyuan County⁷. Fujian fishers have lived on these islands for more than a thousand years. They were not “discovered” into being.

📝 Curator’s note: The mainstream offshore-island narrative is “battlefield tourism,” “blue tears,” and “supply ships.” This frame compresses Matsu into a Cold War product, as if the islands began to exist only in 1949. The significance of the Liangdao Man archaeology is that it stretches the timeline open: human activity in this sea area has lasted 8,000 years, and the 75 years of the Chinese Civil War and its aftermath are only the final short segment. The ancestral graves of Eastern Fujian fishers, the stone coffin of the Mazu legend, and Song-Yuan copper coins are all temporal layers that existed before the Cold War, not annotations to Cold War history.

The 41-Character Stone Inscription of 1617

On the slope of Laotou Mountain at the southernmost end of Dongju Island, there is a cliff inscription.

In May 1617, the 45th year of the Ming Wanli reign, the general Shen Yourong was guarding the Fujian seas. At Dongsha, today’s Dongju Island, he fought the wokou pirates and captured 69 of them alive without losing a single soldier⁸. In 1630, the third year of the Ming Chongzhen reign, Vice Minister of Works Dong Yingju carved a stone inscription to commemorate the battle. The inscription has 41 characters:

「萬曆彊梧大荒落地臘後挾日宣州沈君有容獲生倭六十九名於東沙之山不傷一卒閩人董應舉題此。」⁹

This “Dapu Stone Inscription” is the oldest and largest surviving cliff inscription in the Matsu area, and is now a Lienchiang County historic monument. It was discovered in 1953, when the ROC military was stationed on Dongju and building defensive works; at the time, it was fenced off with barbed wire for protection¹⁰.

Shen Yourong also has a second entry in Taiwan’s history. In 1604, in Penghu, he persuaded the Dutch East India Company commander Wijbrand van Warwijck to withdraw. The stele “Shen Yourong Orders the Red-Haired Barbarian Wijbrand and Others to Withdraw” is now preserved at Penghu Tianhou Temple, and in 2022 it was designated a national treasure-level cultural artifact¹¹. The same Ming general suppressed two maritime-power conflicts within 13 years, one at the northern end of the Taiwan Strait and one at the southern end: one against wokou pirates, the other against the Dutch.

During the Sino-French War of 1884-1885, when the French fleet blockaded the Taiwan Strait and attacked Keelung, the Matsu Islands also lay offshore from the Min River estuary and could have served as a French supply node. But the war never actually reached Matsu. Matsu’s direct contact with modern warfare would have to wait another 70 years.

During Qing rule, from 1683 to 1895, the area of Lienchiang County belonged to Fuzhou Prefecture, Fujian Province, and the Matsu Islands were offshore islands under Lianjiang County’s jurisdiction. For those more than 200 years, Matsu was an archipelago where fishers took temporary shelter. It had no county seat, no large-scale military-agricultural colonization, and no academy. It was a Chinese maritime frontier until 1949, when the Republic of China turned that frontier into its own front line.

After 9 p.m., No One on the Islands Was Allowed to Move

In July 1956, the Matsu Warzone Administration Committee was established.

From that year until the end of warzone administration in Kinmen and Matsu on November 7, 1992, Lienchiang County experienced a full 36 years of unified military-political rule¹². Martial law was lifted on Taiwan proper in 1987; Kinmen and Matsu remained under the martial-law system for another four to five years.

What did daily life look like for local residents during those 36 years?

The Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank entry “Curfew Time, Military Orders Like a Mountain” records several basic rules verbatim: “curfew began after 9 p.m.”; “during curfew, no activity of any kind could be held anywhere on the island”; “soldiers and civilians going out had to know the password, or they would be arrested, with lighter cases receiving confinement and severe cases receiving prison sentences”; “if a major incident made going out unavoidable, one had to apply to the relevant unit for a pass, or state the curfew password, before passage was allowed”¹³. The most direct sentence reads: “Once a sentry noticed something unusual and shouted ‘password,’ if no response came, he would think it was the enemy and open fire without hesitation”¹³.

How many soldiers were there? At its peak, the Matsu Defense Command had about 50,000 troops¹⁴, while the resident population was about 10,000, a soldier-to-civilian ratio of 5 to 1. An archipelago of 28.8 square kilometers housed the strength of five divisions.

Control over material life was also detailed: radios and televisions required permits; high-energy appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, electric rice cookers, and air conditioners were banned in Kinmen and Matsu; buildings could not exceed two stories; cameras could not be used freely; “floating devices” such as tires, lifebuoys, and basketballs were banned from import for fear residents would use them to swim to the other side; firecrackers and betel-nut chewing were prohibited; raising pigeons and flying kites were also banned¹⁵. Kinmen and Matsu even issued their own military scrip, and travel to Taiwan and Penghu required currency exchange.

When Chiang Kai-shek inspected Matsu in 1958, he personally wrote four characters: “枕戈待旦,” literally “sleeping on one’s spear while awaiting dawn,” meaning to stay constantly on alert, never relaxing even in sleep¹⁶. Today, this stone inscription can still be seen in Jieshou Park, Nangan Township; at Xiju Pier there is also the slogan “Do not forget Ju,” while village walls are scattered with slogans from the military-administration era, such as “Defend Matsu,” “Recover the Mainland Territory,” and “Rescue Our Mainland Compatriots”¹⁶. These slogans are physical traces left by 36 years of actual governance, not touristified decoration.

On May 1, 1991, the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion were abolished. On November 7, 1992, the experimental warzone administration period in Kinmen and Matsu formally ended, and martial law in the two places was lifted¹². But even after warzone administration ended, Matsu residents going to Taiwan proper still had to wait nearly two more years: on May 13, 1994, the entry-exit permit system between Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu was formally abolished in law.

The “Passport” Matsu People Used to Enter Taiwan 30 Years Ago

In a 2023 interview, incumbent Lienchiang County Magistrate Wang Chung-ming took out a yellowed document and showed it to a reporter.

It was the “entry-exit permit” Matsu residents used to travel to and from Taiwan proper before warzone administration was abolished in 1992. He said: “That entry-exit permit was a bit like a passport. Back then, whenever we traveled to Taiwan, we had to apply for one”¹⁷.

To enter Taiwan proper, Matsu residents first had to apply to the Ministry of the Interior’s Entry and Exit Service Bureau. Forms, photographs, purpose, expected date of return: every item had to be explained clearly. For Matsu residents going to Taiwan, and for foreigners entering Taiwan, the administrative procedure was effectively the same thing. A county resident of the Republic of China needed a passport-like document to go to his own capital. There are probably not many cases like this in the history of constitutional government.

This “passport” is a material legacy of warzone administration, and also a kind of physicalization of identity: although you were a person of Lienchiang County, Republic of China, you could not freely enter other parts of the Republic of China. From 1956 to 1994, Matsu residents were, in substance, “semi-foreigners” inside the Republic of China.

✦ “If Taiwan does not want us, and we do not want to be Chinese, what are we supposed to do?”¹⁸

This sentence comes from a Mingrenta report on identity among young people in Matsu. It precisely states Lienchiang County’s existential dilemma in 2026: administratively, we belong to Taiwan, but our ancestral origins, language, geography, and religion are closer to Fujian; we have an elected county magistrate and voting rights, but our history was formed by the Cold War front line.

The 2012 Gambling Referendum: No Follow-Up for 13 Years

After warzone administration ended, Matsu residents tried another way to “decide for themselves”: a local referendum.

On July 7, 2012, Lienchiang County held a referendum on whether “Matsu should establish an international tourism resort zone with an attached tourism casino.” There were 7,762 registered voters; turnout was 40.76%, with 3,164 people voting; 1,795 voted in favor, or 57.24%, and 1,341 opposed, or 42.76%. The proposal passed by a margin of 454 votes¹⁹.

This was the first successful local referendum in Taiwan’s history, and the third local referendum held after the Referendum Act took effect in 2004. Penghu County’s gambling referendums in 2009 and 2016 were both defeated by opposition votes, 56.44% opposed and 60.1% opposed respectively; Kinmen’s 2023 gambling referendum was likewise rejected by a large margin. Across Taiwan, only the people of Matsu said: we want to try²⁰.

The reason was economic. Matsu’s shipping links were inconvenient, the tourism off-season was long, and young people were leaving for Taiwan proper to study and work. At the time, the county government worked with Taiwan Weidner Resorts Corporation on a plan to build an international tourism resort on Beigan, including a casino, five-star hotel, and convention center, positioning it as a Northeast Asian gambling hub close enough to mainland China and also close enough to Japan and Korea.

The referendum passed. And then nothing happened.

The local referendum only cleared the first hurdle. To actually open a casino, the draft Tourism Casino Management Act still had to pass the Legislative Yuan. In December 2013, the Executive Yuan reviewed related drafts, but disagreement among parties led to stalemate, and the meeting adjourned without passage²¹. In 2015, Taiwan Weidner quietly withdrew from Matsu gambling development on the grounds that the “special gambling law had not passed.” As of 2026, 13 years have passed. No casino has been built, and no special gambling law has passed.

Lienchiang County Government Secretary-General Chang Lung-te said in 2017: “In recent years, Matsu no longer relies, and no longer needs to rely, on the big gambling pie; instead, it develops tourism on its own”²². That sounds like acceptance, but the fact remains that for 13 years the central government has blocked it: the people of Matsu passed a democratic procedure, but without central legislation, local will simply idled in place.

This case is a meaningful point of observation for Taiwan’s constitutional order. A local referendum is democratic, but the reach of democracy was cut off at central legislation. Matsu residents spent 36 years emerging from the warzone, and then spent another 13 years discovering that their own decision still could not pass that wall.

One Language, Three Names: Eastern Min, Fuzhou Dialect, Matsu Language

The mother tongue of Matsu residents is completely different from Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, and Indigenous languages on Taiwan proper.

It is Eastern Min, and is “largely similar with minor differences” to the Fuzhou dialect spoken in the city of Fuzhou²³. Most Matsu residents trace their ancestry to Changle County, while others come from Luoyuan and various Fuzhou counties, so this language is also called “Changle dialect,” “Fuzhou dialect,” or “Matsu language,” different names for the same Eastern Min language. It is completely mutually unintelligible with Southern Min, the Taiwanese Hokkien of Taiwan proper: the two systems have diverged in phonology, vocabulary, and grammar for more than a millennium.

In 2017, the ROC government formally recognized the Matsu language as one of the national languages of Taiwan²⁴. In 2019, the Development of National Languages Act was passed, making the Matsu language an object of legal protection. Taiwan’s family of mother tongues therefore gained a “fourth kind”: an Eastern Min branch alongside Southern Min, Hakka, and the Indigenous languages.

But language loss is extremely severe.

An English-language article on the Matsu language in Taiwan Insight states bluntly: “Less than 30% of Matsu households currently speak in their mother tongue. Some elders believe that this is a dying language.” The same article records another sentence: “The ban on speaking in dialects was painful and hastened the crisis of language extinction.”²⁵

The language situation in Matsu is far more severe than on Taiwan proper. The Wikipedia entry for the Matsu language records verbatim: “In recent years, with the Matsu area opening to tourism and large numbers of people migrating to Taiwan Island, many local Matsu residents have begun to speak Southern Min Taiwanese; the Matsu language, as a mother tongue, faces decline, and the younger generation seldom speaks it or even cannot speak it.”²⁶

The more urgent number comes from Bade, Taoyuan: “Over the three most recent generations, the Matsu language has suffered an attrition rate as high as 94%, placing it at the ‘severely endangered’ level.”¹⁷

Bade, Taoyuan, is the largest settlement of Matsu people on Taiwan proper. In the 1960s and 1970s, as fishery resources were depleted and the textile industry rose, large numbers of Matsu residents went to textile factories in Bade, Taoyuan, for work. Today, Matsu’s resident population on the islands is about 13,000, while descendants of Matsu migrants in Bade, Taoyuan, are estimated at 50,000 to 60,000, four to five times the island population¹⁷. Matsu people have a phrase for this self-understanding: “four townships and five islands plus Bade.”

Part of the source of language loss can be traced back to the 36 years of warzone administration. From 1956 onward, after the ROC military was stationed there, it vigorously promoted Mandarin and literacy, motivated by “civil-military coordination and joint operations.” The Matsu Defense Command placed “instructors” in each village, forcing adults to learn Mandarin and children to attend school and become literate²⁷. Mandarin literacy was a public-health success, but for the Matsu language it was a linguistic earthquake.

📝 Curator’s note: The usual popular-science narrative says, “Matsu language, like the Fuzhou dialect, is Eastern Min.” Linguistically, this is correct, but it places the Matsu language within the coordinate system of a “Chinese dialect island.” A more accurate view is this: the Matsu language is the Eastern Min coordinate on Taiwan’s linguistic map. Like Kinmen speech, which also belongs to the Southern Min branch but has a different accent, Toucheng speech in Yilan, Manzhou speech in Pingtung, and Baisha speech in Penghu, it is part of Taiwan’s mother-tongue diversity. When the Matsu language loses 94% of its speakers, what Taiwan loses is an internal dimension of itself as a multilingual society.

Before and After Tourism: Mazu, Blue Tears, and Qinbi Stone Houses

In Lienchiang County’s tourism promotion, three anchors appear most often: Mazu, blue tears, and Qinbi. Each has its original story, and each also has its story after touristification.

The story of Mazu begins with a legend. During the Song dynasty, Lin Moniang threw herself into the sea to rescue her father and brothers and perished. Her body drifted with the sea to the waters near Nangan Island. Fishers recovered it, admired her filial piety, and buried her by the coast.

There are two versions of what followed. The Nangan Township Office website says: “Afterward, fellow villagers from Meizhou learned of this, crossed the sea to Nangan, and brought Mazu’s remains back, leaving only a cenotaph.”²⁸ The legend at Matsu Tianhou Temple says instead that the remains are still in the sacred cave beneath the main hall of Nangan Tianhou Temple. A 1963 incident, the 52nd year of the Republic, is especially widely circulated locally: “In ROC year 52, ROC military engineers, showing disrespect, arbitrarily paved floor tiles over the grave stone; the next day, they discovered that all the tiles above the grave stone had shattered, while the rest of the floor remained intact.”²⁹ The two legends coexist, and neither side can persuade the other.

The name “Mazu Island” later evolved orally into “Matsu Island,” giving Lienchiang County its “Matsu” name. Matsu Tianhou Temple, also called Magang Tianhou Temple, is in Magang, Nangan, facing the sea, and is the most flourishing religious center in all of Matsu. Every year on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, the Mazu ascension festival differs clearly from pilgrimage festivals for Beigang Mazu and Dajia Mazu: the center of Matsu’s Mazu culture is a tomb, the endpoint of Mazu’s life, a core not found in the divided-incense Mazu cult brought by Southern Min people to Taiwan proper.

The story of blue tears is a case of a scientific phenomenon becoming a tourism engine.

The scientific name of blue tears is Noctiluca scintillans, a single-celled dinoflagellate also known in Chinese as “night-light insect” or “night-light algae.” Every year, during the Min River flood season, terrestrial inorganic nutrients enter the sea, diatoms multiply in large numbers, and Noctiluca scintillans, which feeds on diatoms, blooms explosively. When waves, oars, or human footsteps disturb the water, the organisms emit brief blue bioluminescence, each flash lasting about 80 milliseconds³⁰. Research by National Taiwan Ocean University found that water temperatures below 27 degrees Celsius are key to blooms; the outbreak season is usually April to June, extending into March or September in some years.

After social media rose in the 2010s, “blue tears” became famous overnight. Annual visitor numbers to Matsu rose from 210,000 before the pandemic in 2019 to 224,000 after the pandemic in 2023, and blue tears are the main driver of the peak season³¹. The Beihai Tunnel was originally an underground dock for underwater guerrilla boats, built from 1968 as part of the “Beihai Project.” Today, tourists paddle boats into it to see the blue glow inside the tunnel, making it Matsu’s most representative tourism experience. An underwater tunnel excavated by the ROC military in 1968 to hide speedboats for guerrilla warfare became, in the 2020s, the best viewing spot for a blue-tears experience.

But behind the blue-tears blooms lies another story. Red N. scintillans is associated with red tides, consumes dissolved oxygen in the water, and has destructive effects on fisheries. Scientists believe the intensification of blooms may be related to eutrophication caused by industrialization and agricultural fertilizer along China’s coast. In other words, the blue tears Matsu residents see may be directly proportional to pollution density on the other side.

The story of Qinbi Village is the most dramatic.

Qinbi in Beigan was originally an Eastern Fujian stone village. “The Matsu word for turtle is pronounced ‘qin-a’; because the settlement was built against the mountain and facing the sea, inlaid into the mountain wall, it was called ‘Qinbi.’”³² More than 200 years ago, the Chen family from Changle County in Fujian crossed the sea and settled here. “On an island of scarce resources, they used uncut granite as building material, piling rubble into square, freestanding, two-story buildings; stones weighed down the roof tiles, while small, high windows blocked wind and pirates”³³. Stones on the roof resisted typhoons; small windows guarded against pirates. The physical environment directly determined the architectural vocabulary. After the war, men fished and women ran shops; as the economy grew prosperous, construction methods such as “herringbone masonry” and “I-shaped masonry” developed, becoming the most representative techniques of Eastern Fujian architecture.

Then the fisheries catastrophe of the 1970s arrived. Beigan’s fishery resources were exhausted, and residents migrated en masse to Taiwan proper to make a living. “During the fisheries catastrophe of the 1970s, they migrated to Taiwan to make a living, leaving behind a settlement that gradually became desolate and dilapidated”³⁴. By the late 1980s, the whole of Qinbi Village had fewer than three or four households left.

In ROC year 89, or 2000, the county government launched the “Qinbi Settlement Historic House Restoration Project,” which was completed in ROC year 90, or 2001. “Over 200 years, it experienced birth, decline, and rebirth; shops became visitor centers, and homes became cafés or guesthouses.”³⁵ Today, Qinbi is an Instagram check-in hotspot. Eastern Fujian stone houses sell coffee and souvenirs. A ruined village that once had only three households now draws tens of thousands of tourists every year.

✦ “Leaving behind a settlement that gradually became desolate and dilapidated.”³⁴

Read alongside Qinbi before and after restoration, this sentence is heavy. Tourism saved the stone houses, and also turned them from villagers’ homes into visitors’ backdrops. Which fate is better? No one has the authority to speak for Qinbi.

After the Soldiers Left: Chinese Crested Terns, Sika Deer on Daqiu Island, and Dongju Island Lighthouse

After warzone administration ended, another change came to Matsu: on islands the soldiers left, nature returned.

The Chinese crested tern is the most dramatic example. Only about 200 remain worldwide, and the IUCN lists the species as critically endangered, the highest threat category³⁶. Every year, about 10 to 20 individuals, or 5 to 10% of the global population, fly to the Matsu Islands to breed. After Zhejiang, China, this is the world’s largest breeding site.

The breeding sites are the eight uninhabited islands of the Matsu Islands Tern Refuge: the Twin Reefs of Dongyin; Sanlian Islet, Zhongdao, Tiejian Island, Baimiao, and Jinyu of Beigan; Liuquan Reef of Nangan; and Sheshan of Juguang. Most were military restricted areas during the years of military control, places humans were forbidden to enter. Humans were banned, and birds were given space. Recent threats have become fishing boats illegally entering the refuge at night, causing mass nest abandonment in both 2020 and 2021; attacks by peregrine falcons; and disturbance from military exercises.

Daqiu Island is another case. It is an uninhabited island north of Beigan. In January 1997, sika deer were released onto the island, with an initial population of 13. After the ROC military fully withdrew in 1998, the deer reproduced freely without human disturbance. Today, Daqiu Island has about 200 to 250 sika deer and is called “Taiwan’s version of Nara’s deer island”³⁷. An uninhabited island that was once a military stronghold has become Taiwan’s most distinctive deer habitat.

Dongju Island Lighthouse, also known as Dongquan Lighthouse, is an older story. Built in the 11th year of the Qing Tongzhi reign, it was first lit on July 12, 1872. Its origin lay in the opening of coastal trade after the Qing court and Britain signed the Treaty of Nanjing following the Opium War; it was built at British request to help identify the direction of Fuzhou. Constructed of granite, with a tower about 19.5 meters high, it took three years to build, and is the first surviving Western-style lighthouse in the Taiwan-Fujian region to be built of granite³⁸. Local residents call the white-walled buildings beside the lighthouse the “White-Haired Castle.” It is now a national historic monument. Military installations from an artillery company stand beside the lighthouse, and are now open to tourism.

Liangdao Man: 8,000 years. Dongju Lighthouse: 150 years. Warzone administration: 36 years. The blue-tears tourism boom: 15 years. Lienchiang County’s timeline stacks layer upon layer across 28.8 square kilometers. The county’s small size is completely disproportionate to the historical density it has accumulated.

Back to Nangan, Back to 16 Kilometers from Fuzhou

Return to the opening image.

On the ridge above Jieshou Village, Nangan, looking north, Fuzhou’s urban outline floats into view in good weather. Looking south, Taiwan proper is 200 kilometers away. The “枕戈待旦” stone inscription on the mountaintop is still there; it has never been moved since Chiang Kai-shek wrote it in 1958. But what one sees from here today are China Mobile signal towers, Fuzhou high-rises, and Pingtan Island’s sea-crossing bridge, not enemy territory. The Cold War has not ended; it has simply changed its mode of existence.

In April 2026, Lienchiang County’s registered population was 13,646³⁹. That is slightly more than the 10,000 residents of the warzone administration period, and nearly four-fifths fewer than the 50,000 ROC troops at the height of military control. Most young people study and work on Taiwan proper, keeping household registration in Matsu and returning home to vote. The 50,000 to 60,000 descendants of Matsu migrants in Bade, Taoyuan, are four to five times the islands’ resident population. The “people” of this county have always been outside; the islands are where they return for Lunar New Year and elections.

The Matsu language has declined to use in fewer than 30% of households, and among three generations in Bade, Taoyuan, it has lost 94%. Blue tears bring 200,000 tourists a year, but locals remember blackout controls. Qinbi has been restored into an Instagram check-in hotspot, but the residents who left in the 1970s did not return. The gambling referendum passed in 2012 still had no follow-up by 2025. All of Lienchiang County’s stories are stories of “after the soldiers left,” but after the soldiers left, the county did not become the future people had imagined.

Next time you go to Matsu, do not only look at the blue tears.

Go see the display of that 7,900-year-old Liangdao Man skeleton, if an access window is open. Go to Laotou Mountain on Dongju and look at the 41 characters of the Dapu Stone Inscription, where the wokou of 1617 and the barbed wire of 1953 occupy the same rock. Go burn incense at Magang Tianhou Temple on Nangan, the temple said to have Mazu’s sacred cave beneath it. Go have a coffee in Qinbi, Beigan, and remember that inside these 200-year-old stone houses, people once fished, people ran shops, people left, and people did not come back.

Then return to that ridge and look north.

Fuzhou is 16 kilometers away. Taiwan is 200 kilometers away. This distance will not change. This is the most physical legacy the Cold War left to the people of Matsu: geography. The whole of Lienchiang County is contained in this geographic position.

Further Reading

• Offshore Islands and Maritime Culture — The offshore-island communities formed jointly by Matsu, Penghu, Kinmen, Lanyu, and Green Island, and different approaches to maritime culture
• The Geographic Features and Formation of Taiwan’s Islands — A comparison between the granite geology of the Matsu Islands and the formation mechanisms of other Taiwanese islands
• Keelung City — The Taima ferry takes 8 to 10 hours from Keelung to Nangan; Keelung is Matsu’s physical connection point with Taiwan proper
• The Martial Law Period — Martial law ended on Taiwan proper in 1987, while Kinmen and Matsu lasted until the end of warzone administration in 1992; read this piece for two versions of martial law in comparison
• Taiwan’s National Defense and Military Modernization — The present-day 4,000-person scale of Matsu Defense Command compared with its peak force structure of 50,000 troops
• Linguistic Diversity and Mother-Tongue Culture — The position of Eastern Min, or Matsu language, as Taiwan’s fourth major mother tongue
• Legends of Mazu and the Great Daoist Deity — The sacred-cave belief at Matsu Tianhou Temple, and how it differs from Southern Min Mazu traditions on Taiwan proper
• Taiwan’s Coastal Landforms and Maritime Landscapes — The marine structure of the 9.25-kilometer waters between the Matsu Islands and the Beijiao Peninsula
• Pingtung County — 22 Counties and Cities Series: the 1874 Mudan Incident, Typhoon Morakot, and five Indigenous peoples living among 780,000 people; like Matsu, a key node often missed by center-focused narratives
• Kinmen County — A sibling in the 22 Counties and Cities Series, another offshore island county of Fujian Province. The same 1956 warzone administration, 1992 abolition, and 2001 Mini Three Links, but Kinmen speaks Southern Min with a Tong’an accent, lies 1.8 kilometers from Xiamen, and has the two decisive battles of Guningtou and the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis; with Lienchiang County, it is the same system but different flesh and bone

Image Sources

This article uses five Wikimedia Commons images under CC BY-SA licenses.

The hero image in the frontmatter is Sleepingstar’s “Matsu Montage” (CC BY-SA 3.0), a composite of six Matsu Islands scenes, including Qinbi, Dongyin Lighthouse, military tunnels, blue tears, and others.

Four inline images:

• §Looking North from Nangan’s Ridge: Beigan Township from Big Hill — Photo: Foxy1219, CC BY-SA 4.0, 2022-05-02. Beigan seen from Bishan, with the outline of the Fujian coast visible in the distance.
• §The 41-Character Stone Inscription of 1617: Fuzheng Village, Dongju, Matsu, Taiwan — Photo: WT-shared Shoestring, CC BY-SA 4.0, 2011-11-24. The Eastern Fujian settlement of Fuzheng Village, Dongju.
• §Before and After Tourism, blue-tears section: Blue Tears in the Matsu Islands — Photo: e_ella, CC BY-SA 2.0, 2014-05-05. Blue tears nightscape.

The final image is Foxy1219’s “Qinbi Village 2024-09-11” (CC BY-SA 4.0), showing granite houses in Qinbi Village and Eastern Fujian “herringbone masonry.”

Licenses: CC BY-SA 4.0 / CC BY-SA 3.0 / CC BY-SA 2.0.

References

1. Lienchiang County geographic location — Lienchiang County Government — Official geographic data from the Lienchiang County disaster prevention information website and county government website, recording 4 townships, 5 main islands, 36 affiliated islands, total area of 28.8 square kilometers, nearest point to the mainland at 9.25 kilometers, about 50 kilometers from downtown Fuzhou, and about 200 kilometers from Taipei. Data current as of 2026 Lienchiang County household registration records; other sources list 29.54 km² or 29.6 km², with differences arising from whether affiliated islands and reefs are counted. This article uses Wikipedia’s mainstream figure of 28.8 km².↩
2. History of Lienchiang County — Wikipedia — County government relocation history: Communist forces occupied the mainland Lianjiang county seat in August 1949; the Matsu Administrative Office was established on December 15, 1950; the Lienchiang County Government was reestablished on Nangan in August 1953; it moved to Tieban Village in 1959 and to its present location in Jieshou Village in 1978.↩
3. Fujian Provincial Government — Wikipedia — History of the provincial government’s transformation: the Fujian Provincial Government was downgraded to nominal status in 1998, formally de-tasked in 2019, and its operations were taken over by the Executive Yuan’s Kinmen-Matsu Joint Services Center.↩
4. Liangdao Man archaeology — PTS News — Report on the 2012 discovery of complete human skeletons on Liang Island, named “Liangdao Man No. 1” and “Liangdao Man No. 2”; mitochondrial DNA comparisons showed shared maternal ancestry with the Atayal and Amis peoples, leading to the inference that Liangdao Man may have been among the earliest ancestors of the Austronesian peoples.↩
5. Liangdao Daowei Archaeological Site listed as a national archaeological site — Ministry of Culture — Official 2023 Ministry of Culture announcement designating the Liangdao Daowei Archaeological Site as Taiwan’s 11th national archaeological site; carbon-14 dating places it 7,000-8,300 years before present, making it the earliest Neolithic site currently found within Taiwan’s territory.↩
6. Prehistory of the Matsu Islands — Lienchiang County Government — County cultural materials documenting the Song-dynasty Liang Kejia’s Sanshan Zhi reference to Gantang, the Yuan-dynasty monetary inscription “Zhongtong jiaochao, twenty strings” on the Daqing Temple stele in Tieban Village, Nangan, and evidence that Nangan already had settlements in the Yuan period.↩
7. Administrative history of Juguang Township — Juguang Township Office — Juguang Township administrative history showing that Dongju and Xiju originally belonged to Changle County, while Dongyin and Xiyin originally belonged to Luoyuan County, and that Eastern Fujian fishers from different native places settled on different islands.↩
8. Historical background of the Dapu Stone Inscription — Lienchiang County Cultural Affairs Department — County historic monument data: in May 1617, the 45th year of the Ming Wanli reign, Shen Yourong guarded the Fujian seas, fought wokou pirates at Dongsha, today’s Dongju Island, captured 69 alive without losing a soldier, and in 1630, the third year of the Ming Chongzhen reign, Vice Minister of Works Dong Yingju carved a stone inscription to commemorate the battle.↩
9. Full text of the Dapu Stone Inscription — National Cultural Heritage Database — Verbatim record of the 41-character Dapu Stone Inscription: “萬曆彊梧大荒落地臘後挾日宣州沈君有容獲生倭六十九名於東沙之山不傷一卒閩人董應舉題此,” the oldest and largest surviving cliff inscription in the Matsu area.↩
10. Preservation history of the Dapu Stone Inscription — Wikipedia — Preservation history: the ROC military discovered the Dapu Stone Inscription in 1953 while stationed on Dongju and constructing defensive works, surrounded it with barbed wire for protection, and announced it as a Lienchiang County historic monument on November 11, 1988.↩
11. Stele of Shen Yourong Ordering the Red-Haired Barbarian Wijbrand and Others to Withdraw — National Cultural Heritage Database — Record of the same general’s two deeds: Shen Yourong ordered Dutch East India Company commander Wijbrand van Warwijck to withdraw from Penghu in 1604; the stele is preserved at Penghu Tianhou Temple and was designated a national treasure-level cultural artifact in 2022.↩
12. Warzone administration period in Kinmen and Matsu — Wikipedia — Full warzone administration timeline: the Matsu Warzone Administration Committee was established in July 1956; the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion were abolished on May 1, 1991; warzone administration in Kinmen and Matsu formally ended on November 7, 1992, based on the date on the Dongyin Township Office website, though some sources write November 5; this article uses November 7; Taiwan-Penghu-Kinmen-Matsu entry-exit permits were abolished on May 13, 1994.↩
13. Curfew Time, Military Orders Like a Mountain — Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank — Ministry of Culture Taiwan Cultural Memory Bank entry recording verbatim Matsu warzone-administration curfew rules: curfew after 9 p.m.; soldiers and civilians going out had to know the password or be arrested, with lighter cases receiving confinement and severe cases receiving prison sentences; a pass was required to go out; and if a sentry noticed something unusual, shouted the password, and received no response, he would “think it was the enemy and open fire without hesitation.”↩
14. History of Matsu Defense Command — RFA 2023 — Radio Free Asia’s 2023 in-depth report on Matsu records verbatim: “At its wartime peak, Matsu hosted around 50,000 troops, dwarfing the number of civilians.” This documents the military-control history of 50,000 ROC troops versus 10,000 residents, a soldier-to-civilian ratio of 5:1.↩
15. Everyday controls under Kinmen-Matsu warzone administration — Taipei Times 2007 — English record of control details: radios and televisions required permits; refrigerators, washing machines, rice cookers, air conditioners, and other high-energy appliances were banned; buildings could not exceed two stories; cameras could not be used freely; tires, lifebuoys, basketballs, and other “floating devices” were banned from import; firecrackers, betel-nut chewing, pigeon-raising, and kite-flying were prohibited; and Kinmen and Matsu had separate currency, or military scrip.↩
16. Battlefield slogans left behind in the Matsu Islands — Voice of Matsu — Local media outlet Voice of Matsu documents and researches battlefield-era slogans, including “枕戈待旦” in Nangan’s Jieshou Park, written by Chiang Kai-shek in 1958; “毋忘在莒” at Xiju Pier; and village slogans such as “Defend Matsu,” “Be loyal to the leader,” “Recover the Mainland Territory,” and “Rescue Our Mainland Compatriots.”↩
17. Matsu residents needed passport-like permits to enter Taiwan 30 years ago — City Learning 2023 — In-depth report from City Learning, a Global Views Monthly series, in which incumbent Lienchiang County Magistrate Wang Chung-ming reveals that before warzone administration was abolished in 1992, Matsu residents traveling to Taiwan had to apply to the Ministry of the Interior’s Entry and Exit Service Bureau for entry-exit permits “like passports”; the report also notes that descendants of Matsu migrants in Bade, Taoyuan, number 50,000-60,000, four to five times the island population, and that the Matsu language in Bade has lost 94% over three generations, placing it at the severely endangered level.↩
18. If Taiwan does not want us — Mingrenta — Mingrenta report on identity dilemmas among young people in Matsu, with the verbatim quote “If Taiwan does not want us, and we do not want to be Chinese, what are we supposed to do?” reflecting the dual identity tension of Lienchiang County as an area under Fujian Province but also ROC territory.↩
19. 2012 Lienchiang County gambling referendum — Wikipedia — Full election data for the July 7, 2012 Lienchiang County gambling referendum: 7,762 registered voters, 40.76% turnout, 3,164 voters, 1,795 votes in favor (57.24%), 1,341 against (42.76%), 3,136 valid votes, and the first successful local referendum in Taiwan’s history.↩
20. Comparison of Taiwan gambling referendums — CNA — Central News Agency summary comparing the three counties’ gambling referendums: Penghu County’s 2009 referendum, with 43.56% in favor and 56.44% opposed, and 2016 referendum, with 60.1% opposed, were both rejected; Kinmen County’s 2023 gambling referendum was likewise defeated by a large margin; only Lienchiang County, Matsu, passed one.↩
21. Special gambling law blocked — Legislative Yuan records — Legislative deadlock record: in December 2013, the Executive Yuan reviewed the draft Tourism Casino Management Act, but disagreement among parties led to stalemate and adjournment without passage; in 2015, Taiwan Weidner Resorts Corporation withdrew from Matsu gambling development on the grounds that the “special gambling law had not passed”; the law still had not passed as of 2026.↩
22. Lienchiang County Government lets go of gambling and develops tourism on its own — CNA 2017 — In a 2017 interview with CNA, Lienchiang County Government Secretary-General Chang Lung-te stated verbatim: “In recent years, Matsu no longer relies, and no longer needs to rely, on the big gambling pie; instead, it develops tourism on its own,” marking a shift in policy position.↩
23. Matsu language, Eastern Min — Wikipedia — Linguistic classification data: Matsu language belongs to the Houguan branch of Eastern Min; it is completely unintelligible with Southern Min, or Taiwanese Hokkien; it is “largely similar with minor differences” to the Fuzhou dialect spoken in Fuzhou City, but differs in accent and usage; residents’ ancestors mostly came from Changle County, and people call it “Changle dialect” or “Fuzhou dialect.”↩
24. Development of National Languages Act — Ministry of Culture — Language policy history: in 2017, the ROC government formally recognized the Matsu language as one of the ROC’s national languages; in 2019, the Development of National Languages Act passed, making the Matsu language an object of legal protection.↩
25. Matsu Language: A Language Too Unique To Forget — Taiwan Insight — Taiwan Insight’s 2022 in-depth report on the survival crisis of the Matsu language records verbatim: “Less than 30% of Matsu households currently speak in their mother tongue. Some elders believe that this is a dying language.” + “The ban on speaking in dialects was painful and hastened the crisis of language extinction.” + “Others have been traumatised since they were discriminated against as foreigners or mainlanders because of their unique 'an' and 'ang' accents.”↩
26. Current loss of the Matsu language — Wikipedia — Verbatim Chinese record: “In recent years, with the Matsu area opening to tourism and large numbers of people migrating to Taiwan Island, many local Matsu residents have begun to speak Southern Min Taiwanese; the Matsu language, as a mother tongue, faces decline, and the younger generation seldom speaks it or even cannot speak it.”↩
27. ROC military promotion of Mandarin after entering Matsu — Matsu Eastern Min Learning Resource Network — Official language-preservation resource website recording that from 1956, after the ROC military was stationed in Matsu, it vigorously promoted Mandarin and literacy classes for the public, motivated by “civil-military coordination and joint operations”; the Matsu Defense Command placed “instructors” in each village, forcing adults to learn Mandarin and children to attend school and become literate; the result was countywide Mandarin use but a severely weakened status for the Matsu language.↩
28. Mazu legend — Nangan Township Office — Nangan Township Office website records verbatim the Mazu legend: “According to folk legend, during the Song dynasty, Lin Moniang threw herself into the sea to rescue her father and brothers and unfortunately perished. Lin Moniang’s body drifted with the sea to the waters near Nangan Island and was recovered by fishers. Moved by her filial piety, the fishers buried her by the coast. Afterward, fellow villagers from Meizhou learned of this, crossed the sea to Nangan, and brought Mazu’s remains back, leaving only a cenotaph.”↩
29. Sacred-cave legend of Matsu Tianhou Temple — Lord Cat historical record — Local legend from the sacred cave beneath the main hall of Matsu Tianhou Temple, or Magang Tianhou Temple, records verbatim: “In ROC year 52, ROC military engineers, showing disrespect, arbitrarily paved floor tiles over the grave stone; the next day, they discovered that all the tiles above the grave stone had shattered, while the rest of the floor remained intact.” This local-legend version is presented alongside the Nangan Township Office “cenotaph” version.↩
30. Scientific principles of blue tears — National Taiwan Ocean University — National Taiwan Ocean University blue-tears research project website: the scientific name is Noctiluca scintillans, a single-celled dinoflagellate; when disturbed, it emits blue bioluminescence lasting about 80 milliseconds each time; the Min River flood season brings inorganic nutrients, causing diatoms to multiply; water temperatures below 27 degrees Celsius are key to the mechanism. The research was published in Frontiers in Marine Science.↩
31. Matsu tourism visitor statistics — Matsu National Scenic Area Administration — Official Matsu annual visitor statistics: 210,260 visits in 2019; 225,517 in 2020; 138,181 in 2021 during the pandemic; 224,719 in 2022; and 224,317 in 2023. Blue tears are the main driver of the peak season.↩
32. Naming of Qinbi Village and Eastern Fujian stone houses — Voice of Matsu — Local media outlet Voice of Matsu records verbatim: “The Matsu word for turtle is pronounced ‘qin-a’; because the settlement was built against the mountain and facing the sea, inlaid into the mountain wall, it was called ‘Qinbi,’” explaining the origin of the name.↩
33. Qinbi architectural techniques and history — chadars.com — Verbatim record: “More than 200 years ago, the Chen family from Changle County in Fujian crossed the sea and settled here. On an island of scarce resources, they used uncut granite as building material, piling rubble into square, freestanding, two-story buildings; stones weighed down the roof tiles, while small, high windows blocked wind and pirates,” documenting Eastern Fujian stone-house techniques.↩
34. Qinbi decline and restoration — chadars.com — Verbatim record: “During the fisheries catastrophe of the 1970s, they migrated to Taiwan to make a living, leaving behind a settlement that gradually became desolate and dilapidated; in 2000, with the concept of settlement preservation, they were restored one by one,” documenting Qinbi Village’s 1970s fishery decline, resident outmigration, and the fact that by the late 1980s only three to four households remained.↩
35. Qinbi settlement rebirth after restoration — chadars.com — Verbatim record: “Over 200 years, it experienced birth, decline, and rebirth; shops became visitor centers, and homes became cafés or guesthouses,” documenting the restoration history: work began in ROC year 89, or 2000, was completed in ROC year 90, or 2001, and the settlement was transformed into a public-private tourism attraction.↩
36. Chinese crested tern conservation — Environmental Information Center — Environmental Information Center in-depth report on the Chinese crested tern, the “mythical bird”: only about 200 remain worldwide; IUCN lists it as critically endangered, CR; it is a Category I marine protected wildlife species in Taiwan; the eight uninhabited islands of the Matsu Islands Tern Refuge, the Twin Reefs of Dongyin, Sanlian Islet/Zhongdao/Tiejian Island/Baimiao/Jinyu of Beigan, Liuquan Reef of Nangan, and Sheshan of Juguang, form the world’s second-largest breeding site; recent threats include fishing boats illegally entering the refuge at night, causing mass nest abandonment in 2020-2021.↩
37. Daqiu Island sika deer ecology — Matsu National Scenic Area — Daqiu Island, an uninhabited island north of Beigan; sika deer were released in January 1997, initially 13 individuals; after the ROC military fully withdrew in 1998, they reproduced freely; today about 200-250 sika deer live there; the ecological trail is about 400-500 meters long; island ecology data show military facilities and deer herds coexisting.↩
38. Dongju Island Lighthouse, Dongquan Lighthouse — National Cultural Heritage Database — Official architectural data: Dongju Island Lighthouse was built in the 11th year of the Qing Tongzhi reign and first lit on July 12, 1872; after the Opium War, the Treaty of Nanjing opened coastal trade, and the lighthouse was built at British request to identify the direction of Fuzhou; constructed of granite, with a tower about 19.5 meters high, it took three years to build and is “the first surviving Western-style lighthouse in the Taiwan-Fujian region to be built of granite”; it is now a national historic monument.↩
39. Lienchiang County population statistics — Lienchiang County Household Registration Office — April 2026 monthly report showing Lienchiang County’s registered population at 13,646, slightly higher than the 10,000 residents of the warzone administration period and four-fifths fewer than the 50,000 ROC troops at the peak of military control; the 50,000-60,000 descendants of Matsu migrants in Bade, Taoyuan, are four to five times the island population, a basis for the self-identification phrase “four townships and five islands plus Bade.”↩