Taiwan Outlying Islands
Discover Taiwan Outlying Islands
Introduction
Taiwan’s outlying islands are scattered and various, and two of them sit closer to mainland China than to Taiwan itself.
Penghu is an archipelago of around ninety islands in the Taiwan Strait, low, treeless and permanently windy — which is why it is now covered in wind turbines and why the old houses are built of coral block behind stone walls. Its basalt columns, formed by lava cooling against the sea, are among the finest anywhere, and Magong holds the oldest temple in Taiwan. Summer brings beaches and kitesurfing; winter brings a wind that closes the ferries.
Kinmen and Matsu lie a few kilometres off the Fujian coast and stayed with Taipei in 1949, which made them the front line. Kinmen was shelled for twenty-one years from 1958, and the tunnels cut for troops and boats, the anti-landing spikes on the beaches and the loudspeakers aimed across the water are all still there; so is a great deal of Fujianese and southeast Asian merchant architecture the fighting happened to preserve. Both islands make kaoliang, a sorghum spirit that is the strongest thing in Taiwan. Xiaoliuqiu, off the south-west coast, is a small coral island with reliable green turtles in the shallows.