Treasure Island

It can be tough getting your head around the mere idea of Taiwan, also called the Republic of China. Is it a province of the People’s Republic of China, or an independent nation; a renegade breakaway state, or seat of the true government of all China? The answer depends on whom you ask. But even more enigmatic than the main island of Taiwan is a little island called Kinmen, 400 miles from Taipei and less than a mile off the coast of mainland China, claimed by the ROC and, more recently, the site of an outlandish art project.Americans above a certain age are likely to remember the island as Quemoy, the flashpoint in August 1958 for the Sino-American equivalent of the Cuban missile crisis. China’s Mao Zedong had decided to express his ongoing dismay at Nikita Krushchev’s peaceful co-existence with the United States by raining artillery shells on Quemoy – half a million of them in 44 days. Dwight Eisenhower had formally granted American protection to Taiwan in 1955, so it wasn’t long before U.S. warships entered the Taiwan Straits. The tension kept up until 1978, when the mainland finally stopped its bombardment, after a bizarre period of firing on Kinmen only on odd-numbered days. Meanwhile, the Taiwanese, as well as returning fire, fortified this small island of 60,000 inhabitants with thousands of bunkers and batteries. It also stationed up to 100,000 troops there.Today, only around 2,000 soldiers remain on Kinmen, mostly young men doing their national service duty. In 1995, the island was fully decommissioned and began to welcome tourists.It’s a strange, windblown place, sparsely vegetated and loomed over by the nearby Chinese mainland’s mountains and housing towers. There are still live minefields and giant concrete spikes to prevent landings on the island’s beautiful beaches. The question is: Why would anyone want to visit?Because Kinmen unexpectedly houses some of the best contemporary art installations in the world, and will continue to host them until January 10, probably beyond if the locals agree. It’s truly an unmissable opportunity to experience world-class art in a series of compellingly weird locations.The Bunker Museum of Contemporary Art (BMo-CA;www.caiguoqiang.com/bmoca),which consists of installations by 18 international artists and 19 local elementary schools, was the brainchild of Cai Guo-Qiang, the Chinese artist and curator who was responsible for last year’s fireworks display in celebration of Central Park’s 150th anniversary. BMoCA is part of Mr. Cai’s “Everything is Museum” series, in which the artist turns remote communities into sites where contemporary art can meet local culture. In this case, all but one of the exhibits is a conversion of an army bunker, and the show’s opening on September 11 made it clear that this project is about converting symbols of war and confrontation into demonstrations of artful peace and peaceful art. It’s a new take on the idea of beating swords into ploughshares – extracting the art from artillery, you might say.The bunkers chosen to house the installations vary hugely. Some are dank and echoing caves blasted into mountainsides. Others erupt from the island’s sandy red earth. Perhaps the most successful attempt to bring a peaceful atmosphere to a sweaty bunker is Wang Wen-Chih’s “Dragon Dares Tiger Lair,” a hugely complex construction of bamboo and rattan built in, around, and on top of a large bunker, culminating in a 45-foot-tall breezy tower shaped like an artillery shell. You can climb up inside the tower and bliss out on the top stage, glimpsing views of the island and being caressed by the wind inside this very peaceful space.Another memorable installation is Wang Jian Wei’s “Soft Target” – an elaborately labyrinthine bunker lined entirely with white foam rubber. At first the effect is as magical as a fresh fall of snow, but it quickly becomes disconcerting as the claustrophobic spaces begin to close in, telling a tale of cramped lives of paranoia.On top of that bunker is Shen Yuan’s “Speaker Tea,” which consists of a huge curved metal cone inspired by the enormous megaphones through which Taiwan and China used to scream conflicting propaganda at each other. Until January 10, tea will be served to visitors of the installation on a metal “tongue” coming out of the megaphone’s mouth.Mr. Cai said at the opening ceremonies on the island on September 11 that he hopes the art works will remain permanently on the island “to become part of an arsenal of wealth.” “All over the world, people are building tall, magnificent buildings,” he said. “Here is the opposite – an underground palace for art. A treasure island.”Another reason to visit Kinmen is that the island has its own more permanent attractions setting it apart from other Asian locations. For example, you can walk a quarter of a mile through a U-shaped seawater tunnel blasted out of solid granite by the Taiwanese army to provide a protected entry point for supply ships on the side facing away from China, at Zraishan in the southwest. The calm water inside acts as a reflecting pool for the knobbled rock tunnel, giving the illusion that the walkway is suspended in a doubly huge empty space full of air, not water. It’s as eerie as any of the deliberate art.The main town of Kincheng includes a lovely market square with a permanent stage, plus a warren of winding streets that will take you back in time, especially when locals are burning “ghost money” in the streets at night during Ghost Month (from mid-August to mid-September) or when it’s alive with lighted lanterns during February’s Lantern Festival. Check out the Mao Bar on Mofan Street, a funky bar filled with memorabilia of both Chairman Mao and Chiang Kaishek, leader of the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, whose followers fled China after the Communist Revolution in 1949, and have been trying to “reclaim the mainland” ever since.Another spot unique to Kinmen is the Folk Culture Village on the northeast of the island, a collection of traditional buildings from the Ching Dynasty with extraordinary roof decorations, still inhabited by locals.Items to buy that you can’t get anywhere else include models of the Wind Lion, a god created especially by the inhabitants to protect them from soil eroding winds; and meat cleavers cast from the metal of collected shell casings. It turns out the Kinmenese have been making the creative best of their troubled surroundings for years.

Treasure Island

Treasure Island

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