From Takow to Kaohsiung

Kinmen (金門) Archipelago, Kinmen County, Fujian Province, ROC

Kinmen (金門; lit. "Golden Gate"), which lies just 10 kilometers east of the PRC's Xiamen Harbor (廈門港) but 227 kilometers west of Taiwan proper, still uses the former Post Office romanization system; in Hanyu Pinyin it would be spelled Jinmen. (Notes on Taiwan's place name romanizations: here)

For many decades (and perhaps even to some extent today), Kinmen was known in English (& other European languages) as Quemoy, which Wikipedia suggests may have originated as a Spanish or Portuguese transcription of the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation Kim-mui of 金門. Thus the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis (八二三炮戰; "August 23rd Artillery Battle") which started in 1958 and continued off and on until the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the PRC in 1979, is also known as the Quemoy Incident.

Accoring to the Kinmen National Park website, the name Kinmen dates from 1387 when the Ming-dynasty military sought to beef up its defenses against pirates pillaging China's southeastern coastline with a "golden force that guards at the gate of southern waters,”from which 金門 was derived.

Han-Chinese habitation dated from at least the 4th century CE when six families fled south to escape military invasion of the Central Plains by northern nomadic tribes, at which time it became known as Wuzhou (浯洲; "State of Wu", [MC; though the only definition of 浯 in the dictionary is "the name of a river in Shandong Province"]).

From archaeological excavation of the Fuguodun Site (復國墩), human habitation can been traced back to 5800~8000 years ago. This culture, which shows similarities with the Dabenkeng (大坌坑) Culture of Taiwan, was probably ancestral to today's Aboriginal ethnic groups of the Austronesian Language Group.





Copyright Jiyue Publicaitons 2022