On Kinmen, oyster farmer Li Kai-chen collects molluscs on a shore known for its bloody battle over control of Taiwan.
While the 66-year-old has worked to keep tradition alive on Kinmen, the island has found itself on the front line of Chinese war games.
“These centuries-old oyster beds not only produce food, they represent a culture and a history,” he said.
Photo: Cheng I-hwa, AFP
China launched two-day military drills on Thursday last week around Taiwan and its outlying islands, three days after President William Lai (賴清德) was sworn in, part of an escalating campaign of intimidation by China.
Kinmen’s oyster farmers said they were accustomed to the shows of Chinese might, and would focus instead on collecting molluscs.
“I’m more afraid of the tide than of China,” said a woman who declined to give her full name.
Their historic oyster farm is less than 5km from Xiamen, a Chinese megacity filled with skyscrapers.
Li stood among rows of granite blocks brought from China more than 400 years ago where the oysters grow.
He used a metal staff to scrape them off — a farming method unique from shuckers typically taken off reef rocks.
The blocks are also embedded on the site of defining clashes, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) army of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War to the Chinese Communist Party.
Known as the Battle of Guningtou, they fended off the communist troops under Mao Zedong (毛澤東) on those beaches, successfully retaining Kinmen under the KMT’s control.
“During the war, people fled to survive and the oyster beds were abandoned,” Li said.
Until 1979, Kinmen faced regular bombardment from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, and it was massively fortified by Chiang’s troops.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has upped the rhetoric in recent years and vows that Taiwan’s “unification” with China is “inevitable”.
A loudspeaker the size of a building, historically used by the military to broadcast propaganda to the communist troops on the other side, is now a tourist attraction.
Down on the shore, Li lamented that their farming method is at risk largely because “young people don’t want to work in this industry.”
He used some seawater to clean the shells, which are smaller than those farmed industrially in China.
Kinmen oysters are also distinguished by their light, melt-in-the-mouth texture due to exposure to the wind and sun at low tide on the granite blocks.
They are typically prepared in omelets slathered with a viscous sauce — a Kinmen delicacy that Taiwanese tourists often seek when visiting the island.
Taiwan’s plummeting relations with China have meant that Chinese travelers are no longer among Kinmen’s visitors — something Li hopes will change.
“I hope there will be more [Chinese] tourists coming so we will have business,” Li said.
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