Coming and Going

The most comprehensive local gazetteer about the early history of Fujian, Sanshan zhi (1174–89), records that there are many islands in the northeast sea of Lianjiang County, among which are “the Upper and Lower Gantang in the sea.”¹ Upper Gantang and Lower Gantang are the old names of Nangan and Beigan, the major islands of Matsu. A later record explains the origin of the name: “Gantang … was named for its abundance of cogon grass (maogan).”² A stele standing in Dawang Temple, Tieban Village, Nangan, further reveals the ancients’ footprints on the island. The inscription reads: “Lin Youcai happily donated twenty guan of Zhongtong paper notes.” Zhongtong paper notes were issued during the reign of Kablai Khan (1260–87). By the early years of the thirteenth century, therefore, fishermen were already docking their boats in Nangan and building a temple there.

When Japanese pirates became rampant along the coast in the early Ming period, the government adopted a scorched-earth policy as its coastal defense strategy. In 1387 (Hongwu 20), all the islanders were moved back to the mainland, leaving the Matsu Islands deserted.³ The storytellers’ memories help us to track this large-scale movement of population. According to Chen Jinmei, a storyteller in Shanlong, Nangan, it was said that there once lived a family with the surname Sun and the village was thus once called “Sunlong.” Later, when Japanese pirates went on the rampage, the Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, ordered all the people evacuated and had the whole village burnt down, turning it into a barren wasteland (J. Liu Reference Liu1996b).

Despite an official edict that “not a single ship should sail the seas,” coastal residents began to revisit Matsu for fishing or resettlement by the mid-Ming. At that time, there were already thirteen settlements in Nangan and Beigan. An important gazetteer, Bamin tongzhi (1490), records:

Yet in the early Qing years, the residents of Matsu were once again ordered to move: To wipe out the anti-Qing forces led by Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), the Qing government issued the Great Clearance Order. In 1661, the coastal residents in Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong were forced to move 30 li inland:⁵

After that year, Matsu was abandoned once again (S. Li Reference Li2006: 75). In 1683 (Kangxi 22), following the pacification of Taiwan, the Qing government gradually lifted the sea ban, allowing the coastal residents to return to their homeland. Nonetheless, it was still forbidden to move to the coastal islands, or to fish or build shelters there. Nangan and Beigan remained “deserted islands in the sea.”⁷ It wasn’t until the reign of Qianlong (1735–96) that coastal residents gradually started to colonize the islands. Fishermen went there to “build shelters and to hang fishing nets” (daliao guawang), and the number of settlers steadily multiplied (131). This, however, disturbed the officials: “It is inevitable that some tricky fishermen would build shelters or erect poles to hang fishing nets. … But it is reported that there are even people who live there permanently, who gather crowds to cultivate the land and the mountains, and who disobey expulsion orders.”⁸

Faced with this trend, some officials in Zhejiang and Fujian (such as the Zhejiang Commissioner, Gu Xuechao, 1721–?) worried that the people on the outlying islands would become outlaws and thus suggested burning down the illegal thatch settlements that had been stealthily built over time. Others (such as the Viceroy of Zhejiang-Fujian, Gioroi Ulana, 1739–1795) feared that if all the people of the numerous islands along the coasts of Zhejiang and Fujian were expelled, they would be out of work and might even be forced to turn to banditry. Gioroi Ulana suggested that those people who were already incorporated in the baojia (household registration system) should not be expelled, while other scattered households and those living on forbidden lands should be returned to their domicile of origin and their shelters burned. As for fishermen sailing to the islands and building temporary shelters, the local officials should go and inspect them and issue licenses as appropriate.⁹

As habitation of the southeastern outlying islands had been debated for a long time, Emperor Qianlong finally decided to legalize it. The imperial decree in 1790 (Qianlong 55) proclaimed that the coastal residents had lived and worked in peace and contentment on the islands for a long time; if they were suddenly ordered to move, hundreds of thousands of people along the coasts might be put out of work, and so they were deserving of sympathy. Besides, if the local officials handled this matter improperly, they would disrupt people’s lives and might even cause them to become vagrants or pirates, a most unsatisfactory outcome. The emperor thus ordered that people on the outlying islands should be allowed to live there without fear of expulsion, with the exception of areas classified as forbidden lands. As for the scattered households, most of them were impoverished, and it was wrong to dash the hopes of such people. In the end, the emperor decreed the following:

From then on, it was no longer illegal to stay on the islands, and the number of people there gradually increased.

From the mid-Qing to the late Qing, a steady stream of coastal inhabitants of Lianjiang, Changle and other counties moved to Matsu. Yet the residents still traveled back and forth between mainland China and the islands. Previous studies on Taiwan have shown a close relationship between temple construction and settlement formation (See 1973; C. Hsu Reference Hsu1973). The temples in Nangan were mostly built during the Daoguang years (1820–50) in the late Qing (H. Wang Reference Wang2000); the Matsu residents probably settled there in this period. By the early twentieth century, there were already more than 300 households in Tieban, Nangan.¹¹

As isolated and peripheral islands, the historical literature about Matsu is very limited, and descriptions are even rarer. However, the few extant entries disclose again and again the fact that Matsu had historically been a forbidden outpost. Located in the southeast seas of China, Matsu was inevitably under the sway of the constantly changing frontier policies of the government. The fishermen fluctuated between using the islands as temporary shelters, settling there permanently and deserting the islands when forced to do so.

Signposts in the Sea

As indicated above, historical records of Matsu are scarce. Other documents, such as nautical maps, mark the islands as signposts in the sea and describe how they may serve as places to ride out the tide or to take shelter from the wind before entering Fuzhou, the provincial capital.

Sitting at the mouth of Min River, Nangan, Beigan and Baiquan appear in many ancient nautical charts; Dongyin, Nangan and Beigan are marked in “Zheng He’s Nautical Chart.”¹² S. Li (Reference Li2006: 46–7) further indicates how Matsu was one of the stations along the sailing routes frequented by both investiture ships (fengzhou) and tribute ships (gongchuan) during the Ming and Qing periods. Investiture ships were sent from Fuzhou to Ryukyu to confer kingship on its kings, while tribute ships carried tributes back to the court. An early Qing record (1684) states:

Historically, the Matsu Islands harbored ships destined for Fuzhou while they waited for the tide or took shelter from the wind. The role of Matsu as a safe harbor became more prominent when Western forces reached China in the late Qing. After its defeat in the Opium War of 1842, China ratified the Treaty of Nanking with Britain, stipulating the opening of five ports along the southeastern coast of China. To safely navigate the reef-ridden waters, the British Navy sent vessels in 1843 to map the islands and reefs along the coast of eastern China, and to determine their latitude and longitude. The results were published in The China Sea Directory (Reed and King Reference Reed and King1867), offering an overview of the ports on different islands.

The British Navy provided more information about navigation in the sea of Fujian, including entries about Baiquan (now called Juguang), Nangan, and Beigan (S. Li Reference Li2006: 98). An Englishman named Collinson (Reference Collinson1846: 231) indicated that if ships encountered the northeast monsoon before entering Min River, they could dock in the south of Baiquan Island to take shelter from the wind. The British warship HMS Cornwallis was recorded to have anchored there for five days due to a strong monsoon wind. Ships could obtain small amounts of freshwater in Baiquan and hire pilots capable of navigating ships to the Min River during ebb tide. Two ports in Nangan could harbor ships during the northeast and southwest monsoon seasons, respectively, and freshwater was also available in both ports. The south of Beigan also allowed for anchorage, and junks and small fishing boats traveled back and forth between Beigan and the Min River.

Later, in order to help ships identify routes through the reefs, Robert Hart, who served as the Inspector-General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, built two lighthouses on the south and north ends of the Matsu Islands in 1872 and 1904. The Dongju Lighthouse in the south directed boats to safely enter and exit Fuzhou and Mawei, while the Dongyin Lighthouse in the north directed them to sail in and out of Sandu’ao (see Map 1.1).

Map 1.1 The lighthouses in Matsu and the sea routes around them

(Map based on Wang, Wang, and He 2016: 61)

The two lighthouses stood as signposts to guide boats in the sea of Min. In this period, the Matsu Islands were influenced by the treaty port of Fuzhou: the islanders started to have access to Western ideas and goods. Today, houses including elements of Western styles (F. huang ngiang nah) are still very popular in Matsu. These houses in a mixed style were probably developed by artisans inspired by the foreign houses in Fujian.

Pirates and Bandits

As the Matsu Islands were located at the very border of the state, and there was no formal governance over it, numerous pirates and bandits rose to power one after another. For a long period, the islands along the coast of southeastern China were infested with pirates. On Dongju Island a stele commemorating the defeat of Japanese pirates by a general in the late Ming period (1617) still stands. The notorious pirate Cai Qian (1761–1809), who plundered Zhejiang, Fujian, and Taiwan during the mid-Qing, was active on the Matsu Islands. Historical descriptions show that Cai Qian often hid himself in the seas of North and South Gantang (Beigan and Nangan today). According to a memorandum from Li Diantu ([1738]–1812), the viceroy of Fujian, while the coastal navy was gathering in Gantang to blockade the pirates, all of a sudden, “thirty-something pirate ships sailed out from South Gantang; the navy bombarded and fired at them, chasing them in full force …all the way to the outer sea of Baiquan.”¹⁴

Cai Qian exacted taxes from the island fishermen and forced the people to supply freshwater. In addition, Cai built shacks in Beigan, and procured rice, food, and material for ropes to use on ships.¹⁵ Even in the present day, many elders can still point out the traces Cai Qian left on Matsu. For example, the Matsu people call Cai Qian “the Sea Emperor” (F. hai huongna) (J. Liu Reference Liu1996c); “Datielu” (lit. the blacksmithing furnace) in Tieban Village was said to be the site where Cai forged his weapons; and the crude cannon originally placed in the Goddess Mazu Temple in Tieban was said to be forged by him as well (Wang, Wang, and He Reference Wang, Wang and He2016: 104). It is said that the four Goddess Mazu temples in Matsu were all built by him (J. Liu Reference Liu1996c); indeed, the name of the islands originated from one of those temples (Y. Yang Reference Yang, Liu, Li and Lin2014: 143–4).

The relationship between the islanders and the pirates was in fact even more complicated. Previous studies on the pirates in southeastern China have shown that the pirates relied on the coastal residents in China or the islanders to supply the necessities of life (Antony Reference Antony2003: 17; Murray Reference Murray1987: 89). The story of the Wheat-Field-Plowing King (F. Lemah Toyuong) told by Chen Ruichen, an elder in Dongyin, reveals more about the ambivalent relationship between the islanders and the pirates:

In fact, the fate of Matsu was intertwined with pirates and bandits not only in the Qing Dynasty but also well into the early twentieth century, when the newly formed Nationalist government set up in Beigan the first Gan-Xi Joint Security Office (administering Gantang and Xiyang Islands) in 1934. However, in this time of political instability, the Nationalist government was unable to control the numerous islands in the southeast seas. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the Japanese forces quickly came to these islands (although they did not occupy them). The Japanese warships patrolled the ocean, mainly with an eye to preparing an attack on southeastern mainland China. Meanwhile, the Nationalist government deployed troops on both banks of the mouth of Min River to defend the provincial capital of Fuzhou. During the turmoil of war, islands in the southeast seas, such as Matsu, became an ungoverned no-man’s- land where many local despots rose to power one after another, transforming themselves into pirates. Japan bought off the local forces to fight the Chinese, calling them the “Fujian National Salvation Army” (Fujian jiuguojun). Though the pirates and bandits abided by the orders of the East Asia Development Board in Xiamen under the Japanese, they also cooperated covertly with the National Bureau of Investigation and Statistics, profiting from both sides of the conflict.¹⁶ As for the pirates themselves, they constantly clashed with each other, seeking every opportunity to drive their opponents away. Up to the present day, legends continue to circulate about the pirates and about the many buildings they left on the islands, such as the pirate house in Beigan (see Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1 Pirate house

(Photo by the author)

This house was built by a particularly menacing bandit in Beigan named Chen Zhongping during his heyday in the 1940s. Hiring masons from mainland China to construct it, Chen also had a secret tunnel dug under the floor to allow him escape when needed. Right before completion, however, with only the floor of the second level unfinished, Chen’s “boss” Lin Yihe was killed by the Japanese and he was forced to become a fugitive. Chen did not have a chance to use the house even for a single day. He was later killed in Nangan (J. Liu Reference Liu2004a).

When I first visited Beigan, I was amused to find my guest house hostess reciting in fluent Fuzhou dialect the following limerick composed by Chen:

I still clearly remember the rather realistic punch she threw in my direction to illustrate the last line!

This limerick was obviously intended to intimidate the local people, but it also briefly accounts for the origin of Chen Zhongping and his rise to power. His ancestors came from Changle, Fujian and settled in a place above the Qinbi Village in Beigan. As a young man, he worked in a store in Qiaozi, trading shrimp and other common low-cost fish. Having lost everything by gambling, he fled to Nangan to seek protection from Lin Yihe, a pirate chief. Later, Chen was assigned to Beigan as a boss, collecting protection money from passing fishing boats and merchant ships. All the people in Beigan were afraid of him, for if they dared to disobey him, they would suffer his wrath and even violence.

Other pirates also often compelled the locals to collect fees for them. For example, Chen Ruichen, the Dongyin elder, recalled his own experience:

During the Second World War, many pirates and bandits of this kind dominated the sea along the coast of Fujian. For example, Lin Yihe, who granted Chen Zhongping a position, was an important figure on the Matsu Islands.

The rise of Lin Yihe vividly illustrates how these islands remained “a place outside civilization” (huawai zhi di) during the early twentieth century, where local despots, the Japanese, and various Chinese forces collaborated, competed, and clashed with one another. As noted above, it wasn’t until 1934 that a state institute called the Gan-Xi Joint Security Office was established in Matsu for the very first time, with Wang Xuanyou appointed as its director. Yet in less than two years, Wang was shot dead by Wu Yike, a bandit from Changle, China, who seized the office’s guns. After that, Wu often extorted money and goods in Nangan and Beigan; he even robbed the house of Lin Yihe, by then an important local figure. One day the following year, when Wu sailed out to go plundering, Lin captured him and delivered him to the government of Lianjiang County in China. For his actions, Lin was awarded the position of “police captain” (tanjing) by the county government and made responsible for anti-smuggling operations at sea. Before long, however, Lin himself was listed as wanted by the county government and forced to flee because gangsters in his employ had stolen legally confiscated opium. One day, when a village in Nangan was staging performances for deities, Lin Yihe broke into the Township Office and stole its guns, thereby formally becoming a pirate living on pillage and booty. Lin collected protection fees from fishermen and exacted taxes from passing ships (P. Zhang Reference Zhang2001 and J. Liu 2004b). He also opened an opium shop in Matsu, where opium was sold publicly (J. Lin Reference Li2006).

As previously mentioned, the Japanese bought off the local forces and named them the “Fujian Peace National Salvation Army” (Fujian jiuguojun); Lin Yihe was among their ranks. He was incorporated in 1939 and appointed “the commander of the first road army under the second army group” (Di’er jituan diyi lujun siling), while simultaneously cooperating with the National Bureau of Investigation and Statistics, thus playing both sides. At his peak, he built a munitions factory in Siwei Village, Nangan, and mustered his own private armed force. Later, an unfair division of spoils triggered a conflict between Lin Yihe and Lin Zhen, who was in charge of the army group in Dongju. In 1942, Lin Zhen introduced the forces of Zhang Yizhou from Nanri Island and, conspiring with the Japanese, lured Lin Yihe into the sea to drown him (P. Zhang Reference Zhang2001: 983). After defeating Lin Yihe, Zhang Yizhou renovated the Mazu Temple in Nangan in 1943 and erected a stele in front of the temple as a mark of his victory.

Taking over Lin Yihe’s forces, Zhang Yizhou built his short-lived “Kingdom of the Min Sea (minhai wangchao)” which was headquartered in Nangan and stretched from Xiamen in the south to Zhejiang in the north (C. Zhang Reference Zhang1984: 94). Skillful in dealing with the Japanese, Zhang took good advantage of them:

Zhang also realized that Matsu was on the route from Hong Kong to Shanghai and was frequented by many merchant ships. With roads often blocked during wartime, the sea routes became highly lucrative. Accordingly,

As the Japanese gradually retreated in 1945, Zhang quickly pivoted and opportunistically pledged support to the Nationalist government, transforming himself into part of its “Fujian Vanguard Army” (Fujian xianqian jun), though he was dismissed soon after his incorporation.

To conclude, we could say that in the early twentieth century Matsu was a stateless society located within a no-man’s-land: ruthless bandits and pirates scrambled for power and profit using physical force and tactical ingenuity and surviving in the crevices between warring Japan and China. On these outlying islands they rose, fell, and vanished in the blink of an eye, fleeting as shadows. As the local saying goes: “He whose fist is strongest takes everything” (F. Tie nëüng kungnaumo tuai, tie noeyng to sieh). Indeed, the Matsu islanders seemed to take this for granted.

Islands Indivisible from the Mainland

The people who migrated from the coasts of China to Matsu mainly made their living by fishing. They usually chose an area near the sea as a base, and later extended the village inland toward the mountains (see Fig. 1.2).

Fig. 1.2 Ox Horn surrounds the inlet and spreads uphill

(Photo by Yang Suisheng, approximately 1986)

Fishing was a man’s job and the only source of family income. When men sailed out, they spent all day or sometimes many days at sea, and so the management of the household fell solely on women who were responsible for chores such as cultivating sweet potatoes, cutting firewood for fuel, feeding livestock, and taking care of children. Life on the sea was unpredictable and dangerous and the threat of disaster loomed large; shipwrecks were relatively common. When a fisherman did not return, the entire responsibility for the family fell on the shoulders of his widow. There is a saying in Matsu to the effect that “a wife (or a mother) is a bucket hoop (F. Lauma/ nuongne sei thoeyngkhu).” The analogy drawn between a bucket hoop that encircles the bucket to prevent the staves from falling apart and the role of a mother who holds the family together, protecting the children from destitution, is an apt one.¹⁷ If only one family member is to survive most “would rather that the mother lives” (F. gangnguong si nuongma, me a si nuongne). Nonetheless, the hardships endured by widowed mothers and fatherless children were almost unbearable in these barren islands, and thus the Matsu people also practiced a special kind of marriage arrangement in which a man came into the family of a widow (F. suongmuong). His responsibility was to support the family and to take care of the children left by the deceased husband. This allowed the children to receive good care, instead of becoming “a burden as children-in-law” (tuoyou ping). The rewards flowed both ways: the man entering a widow’s family earned respect for looking after her children, and the family’s continuation was guaranteed.

As for the inter-household relationships, people who had lineage relations or came from the same place usually formed their own communities inside the village. Those who came to Matsu alone would ally with people with similar circumstances into multi-surname dwelling units. In Ox Horn, for example, there are five major neighborhood units, including Da’ao (F. toey o, Big Inlet), Niujiaopi (F. ngu oyh biah, Ox Horn Slope), Xibianshan (F. se bieng nang, Western Hill), Nanguan (F. nang nguang, Southerner’s Place), and Liujianpai (F. loeyh kang be, Line of Six Houses). Not only do the residents of each of these units have diverse hometown origins, but they also worship their own separate deities. Before the communal temple was built in 2008 (discussed in Chapter 8), they organized separate ceremonies on festival days. Take, for example, the Lantern Festival (F. pe mang), which is the most important local celebration. Each unit observed it on a different day; thus the same festival was celebrated as many as eleven times in a village! Even though both banks of the inlet in Ox Horn had jointly built a temple for a deity named “Big Brother Chen” (F. ting noey o), each area still chose a different time (during the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival, respectively) to hold the ceremony. In other words, although the villagers of Ox Horn lived together around the inlet, they were not integrated into a community in this period.

Inter-village interactions were limited too. The islanders usually sold fish directly to the mainland in exchange for daily necessities, but there were few inter-village exchanges inside the islands. The islanders seldom visited other villages except to see relatives, and the roads between villages were merely narrow trails overgrown with grass. The Matsu people called the act of going to another village “traversing a mountain” (F. kuo lang), a phrase which clearly illustrates the inconvenience of movement. A good number of Matsu people mentioned that “it was faster to row a boat” to a neighboring village.

During this period, the residents of the Matsu Islands formed an indivisible whole with their hometowns on the mainland. Indeed, the islanders usually replicated their hometown lineage relations on the islands. For example, of the Cao lineage members in Ox Horn, only the fourth and seventh branches lived in the village; the descendants of the eighth branch were isolated on the other side of the mountain, near the islet of Huangguanyu, lying to the east of Nangan. Not until their shabby thatched huts were burned in an accidental fire were they allowed by the other lineage members to move into Ox Horn. This spatial allocation in Ox Horn reflected the relationships of the Cao lineage in their homeland, Caozhu Village in Fujian. It is said that the founding ancestor of the Cao only had seven sons. The eighth branch comprised the descendants of a long-term farm laborer who was considered to be “of impure ancestry” by the other lineage members. When members of the fourth, seventh, and eighth branches moved to Ox Horn, the Cao people still isolated the descendants of the last branch away from the village as before. This spatial distribution reveals how the early society in Matsu duplicated social relations in the mainland.

Between the islands themselves, there were also linkages based on the relations radiating from the hometown. After moving to Matsu, lineage members still kept in close contact with one another even when they were on different islands. For example, the Caos in Ox Horn were the descendants of the seventh branch Cao lineage in Caozhu, Changle. Some of the members of the seventh branch had also moved to Fuzheng Village in Dongju. In earlier days, these Cao lineage members scattered across different islands even bought boats together. Some Ox Horn people said their parents would, on their deathbeds, urge them in particular to keep up close contact with their relatives on other islands.

Similarly, if lineage members moved to different villages on the same island, their relationships would be even closer. For example, there are two lineages with the surname Chen in Shanlong, the largest village in Nangan. Though both Chens came from Changle, China, one belonged to the Chen lineage of Wenshi (hereafter Wenshi Chen), and the other to the Chen lineage of Lingnan (hereafter Lingnan Chen). The ancestors of the Wenshi Chen originally came from Jiangtian, Changle; some of them later moved to Nangan, and they developed into an important group in Shanlong. There are fewer Lingnan Chen than Wenshi Chen in Shanlong itself, but this is not the case when we take the whole of Nangan Island into consideration: in addition to Shanlong, the Lingnan Chen moved to the villages of Tieban and Meishi. Indeed, if the Lingnan Chen united their members in all three villages, they would outnumber the Wenshi Chen and become the biggest group. Liu Jiaguo, a local historian of Matsu, has recorded a dispute in 1930 between the Wenshi Chen and Lingnan Chen which expanded to the other villages in Nangan, and eventually their hometown—Changle, Fujian:

This story shows how the Matsu Islands and the relevant mainland hometowns were an indivisible whole during this period. Though geographically separated by the ocean, they shared a strong social and cultural affinity. Indeed, the Matsu people say that in the past, traveling to Matsu was described as “going to the outer mountain (F. kho ngie lang),” while departing for the mainland was called “returning home (F. tuong tshuo li).” At that time, people on Matsu would try to return home to celebrate important festivals. Since the location of Ox Horn is very close to the mainland, the villagers always held festivals one day early so that the residents could return to their hometowns in time for the celebrations there. This special custom continues to the present day, but the residents of Ox Horn are now teased by their neighbors as “real foodies (F. tshui ia ie),” who just cannot resist feasting twice for the festival. Last but not least, when islanders reached the end of their lives, some hoped to be brought back to their hometown for a proper burial. As a result, there was a practice of the “waiting coffin (F. ting nuo).” The bereaved set up a shelter outside the village and temporarily placed the coffin on a wooden rack or on a stone to wait for the ship to take the coffin back to the mainland for burial.

Conclusion: Stateless, Transient, and Fragmented Islands

When I first visited Matsu in 2007, I was surprised to find that unlike in Taiwan or southern China, there are no lineage halls on the islands. It wasn’t until I visited an old house and heard an eighty-year-old woman’s explanation that I understood the reason for this. The ancestral altar in this lady’s old house looks very rough and rudimentary (Fig 1.3): when her family built the house, they simply dug a hole in the corner of a wall to place ancestral tablets or pictures. The tablets are often surrounded by a messy collection of objects and appear to lack the aura of sanctity that we commonly see in Taiwan.¹⁹ I asked her why this was so. She replied that the Matsu people did not intend to stay on the island permanently; they lived simply and remained flexible in life, ready to return to the mainland at any time.

Fig. 1.3 Ancestral tablets and photos in a house

(Photo by the author)

Indeed, people who relocated to Matsu in earlier times often moved back and forth between their hometowns and the islands according to the fishing season. As they did not necessarily plan for a long-term settlement, the relationships between the lineage members in Matsu were not as stable as those in their hometown. The lack of a lineage hall or relevant ceremonies further reduced the cohesion among the members on the islands. Cao Changbi, the editor of the genealogy of the Cao family in Ox Horn, spent more than two decades going back and forth across the Strait for his laborious investigations.²⁰ Cao told me that the greatest difficulty he encountered while compiling his book was a frequent lack of links between the lineage members: many people only vaguely know that they are descended from a common ancestor but are unable to trace genealogical relationships in detail. His difficulty gives further clues as to why there are no lineage halls on the islands. Since the islands for them were but “outer mountains,” the Matsu people thought it unnecessary to build a lineage hall in a temporary residence. Neither did they hold any big celebrations on the islands or pilgrimages to China in the early days, since they could return to the mainland at any time.

In sum, Matsu in early times was not even an immigrant society but merely a stopover or temporary place to live, with people coming and going in a constant state of flux. Lying beyond the reaches of state power, the islands were almost deserted, a lawless place where “the strongest fist took everything.” The island society during this period was characterized by transience and brokenness. All of that changed with the arrival of the army in 1949.

Memories of a Murder

One evening around dusk, the company commander of military base 99, located just above Ox Horn, caught sight of Guoxing—a soldier from Jinmen who had been transferred to the Matsu Distillery in the village—heading toward the house of his lover Xuemei. The company commander immediately grabbed his bayonet and strode toward the village.

Xuemei was an attractive woman. She had been dating the company commander for a while when she also began to get close to Guoxing, who frequently went to her house to chat and flirt. The commander had seen him heading there many times and suspected that the two were having an illicit affair. It was around five o’clock that evening, and the commander had already planned what he would do. Watching Guoxing go into her house, he armed himself and hurried straight there.

He barged into the house and attacked Guoxing with his bayonet in a rage. Although badly wounded, Guoxing managed to escape in the confusion. The commander did not bother to follow him. Instead, he turned his attention to Xuemei, forcing her into a corner and stabbing her dozens of times until she collapsed dead in a pool of blood.

Having murdered Xuemei, the commander left the house to find Guoxing. He did not give chase, but rather stood near the doorway of Xuemei’s house and kept watch. He knew the layout of the village so well that there was nowhere Guoxing could escape him.

Bleeding and desperate, Guoxing fled down to the bay to try to find shelter with the soldiers at the Port Military Base, screaming, “Help me! Help me!” But the soldiers had no orders from above and did not know who he was, so they warned him away as he approached. When Guoxing saw that they had no intention of protecting him, he headed back across the village. He passed the central state school to the county hospital, looking for someone to help him. But since it was after five o’clock, the hospital was closed, and the military doctors and nurses had gone home.

Guoxing had no choice but to turn in another direction, likely heading toward the village administrative office. His shrill screams for help carried throughout the village, but no one dared to come out and aid him. The company commander heard him and headed toward his voice. A little past the rice storehouse, he caught up with Guoxing and repeatedly stabbed him in the back. Guoxing collapsed and died beside the fishing nets outside a villager’s house. Then the company commander calmly left the village and returned to the military barracks without so much as a backward glance.

The day after these events occurred, the commander was arrested at military base 99. Because the circumstances involved not only the taking of two lives, but also the highest-ranking official on the island ever to be implicated in a crime, the news had risen through the lines of command to the very top. The judgment came quickly, and announcements of the time and place of the execution were posted all over the island.

Early on the day of the execution, the commander’s hands were bound and a wooden tablet stating his crimes was fastened to his back. He was made to stand in the back of a military truck and was driven from village to village as a warning to the public. Finally, he was taken to the execution site near the entrance to Ox Horn. Many villagers, even those who were just primary school students at the time, witnessed the execution. “Although terrified, we were curious to see what would happen,” they said. Their descriptions of the execution are particularly striking:

Cao Daming, an Ox Horn villager who at the time was barely fifteen years old, later helped the deputy head of the village investigate the case and so could describe the events vividly even forty years later. Others remembered the case clearly because they had witnessed the execution. This event gives us an important perspective on the reign of the military in Matsu. How was military rule imposed on the islands? How were the people governed? In a place which had never been directly governed by a state power before, how did the locals conceptualize the military state?

The Advent of the Military State

When Chiang Kai-shek’s army suffered successive losses against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), his government withdrew to Taiwan in 1949, while the KMT (Kuomintang, Nationalist Party) armed forces retreated to the islands along the coast of southeastern China. In 1949, Chiang’s army reached Matsu, and in 1950 they set up the Matsu Administrative Office (Matsu xingzheng gongshu) with jurisdiction over the archipelago of Matsu and the islands to the north. After the northern islands fell into enemy hands in 1953, the KMT government set up three county administrative offices in Fujian—Lianjiang, Changle, and Luoyuan—on the islands of Nangan, Xiju, and Dongyin, to symbolize that Chiang Kai-shek still governed Fujian province, and therefore more generally the rest of China.

Simultaneously, the KMT established the East China Sea Fleet (Donghai budui), which included fishermen from coastal Fujian, pirates (such as the aforementioned Zhang Yizhou and the former “National Salvation Army”) (Donghai shilu bianzhuan weiyuanhui 1998: 97), and soldiers stationed at Xiju by the mouth of the Min River, who were posed to launch guerrilla warfare at any moment. Since the KMT government offered almost no provisions at that time, the soldiers behaved much like the bandits of the past, plundering shipping vessels to survive (226–8). With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the United States established Western Enterprises Inc. (Xifang gongsi) in Taiwan in 1951, a Western outfit that was designed to spy on the enemy and to carry out guerrilla warfare in order to contain the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) military strength and to prevent it from dispatching forces along the southeastern coasts to fight on the Korean peninsula. The company operated under the auspices of the CIA and established a liaison station in Xiju, collaborating with the East China Sea Fleet in attacks on coastal China (Holober Reference Holober1999). The company closed down when the hostilities ended, and the East China Sea Fleet was absorbed into the KMT armed forces in 1955. Although the USA Military Assistance and Advisory Group still maintained a base in Nangang, they withdrew completely in the 1970s.¹

After repeated losses in the series of battles between the KMT and the CCP on the southeastern islands, the KMT government was left holding control over only two island areas, Jinmen and Matsu. With no end in sight to the standoff between the KMT and the CCP, Chiang Kai-shek implemented military rule over the frontlines of Jinmen and Matsu in 1956. The Warzone Administration (hereafter WZA) was a centralized military administration, subordinating civilian affairs to the military command. It took centralized orders from the highest military commanding officer on the islands, unifying the whole society and the lives of citizens under military rule (Guofangbu shizheng bianyiju 1996: 96, 109). It was originally employed during the war to govern occupied territories and newly recaptured territories, and it was designed to control manpower and resources within military zones for the benefit of the military (8, 101). Since Jinmen and Matsu were on the frontlines of the conflict between China and Taiwan throughout the 1950s, Chiang Kai-shek chose these two areas as a “testing ground” for military administration.

From the point of view of the government, over the short run the implementation of the WZA in Jinmen and Matsu could provide a protective screen across the Taiwan Strait. In the long run, it was hoped that political, economic and cultural development of these warzone areas would be carried out under military control. With the ideal “to administer, instruct, enrich, and secure” (guan, jiao, wei, yang) (190), the military army aimed to transform Jinmen and Matsu into “a model county for the Three People’s Principles” (sanmin zhuyi mofan xian) in the Republic of China.

The WZA was led by the committee chair, held by the islands’ highest commanding officer, with a secretary-general under him, held by the director of the Office of Political Warfare. The Warzone Administration Committee (WZAC) consisted of five to seven members and had jurisdiction over the Liangjiang county government. On the premise that the military would govern civil affairs, the WZAC was responsible for governmental policies and supervision, while the county government was responsible for the planning and implementation of those policies (Fig. 2.1).

Fig. 2.1 Matsu Warzone Administration Organization

(Fujiansheng Lianjiangxianzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui 1986: 192)

In addition to WZA organs, the military had other ways of managing the villages. Each village head was selected by the WZA, and a deputy village head (also known as a political instructor) was sent by the military to supervise and oversee village affairs. The military also had a hand in the lives of individuals: locals were armed and organized into civil defense units. Every man between the ages of 18 and 45 and every woman between the ages of 16 and 35 had to participate in four weeks of training twice a year.²

From the above description, we can see that the WZA produced a system in which the military had full command of the local people and their resources. It was, first and foremost, a systematic administrative system commanded by the military. Second, it reorganized the people into civil defense units to assist in the war effort. Third, it controlled the resources of the islands with the establishment of the “Supply Cooperative” (1953) and the Matsu Distillery (1956), which brought the consumption and circulation of goods under government management. Finally, the military state also published a local newspaper, Matsu Daily (starting in 1957), to promulgate government orders and enforce ideological control. Overall, the WZA or military governance represented a kind of militarized modernism (Moon Reference Moon2005; Szonyi Reference Szonyi2008): power plants, water reservoirs, hospitals, and schools were set up on each island. Many modernizing projects of farming, forestry, fishery, and animal husbandry were implemented to make the best use of the people and resources within the warzone.

The establishment of this particular administration had its own historical basis and objectives. Szonyi’s (Reference Szonyi2008) research on Jinmen builds on the geopolitics of the Cold War and greatly clarifies the significance of Jinmen and Matsu with respect to America, Taiwan, and China. When the Korean War broke out, the American president Harry Truman declared a “neutralization of the Straits of Formosa” in order to cool hostilities between China and Taiwan. In 1958, America and Taiwan signed the “ROC-US Mutual Defense Treaty” to work together to prevent the spread of communism, but the treaty did not extend to Jinmen and Matsu. In 1979, when the US and China established diplomatic relations, America abrogated its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. Although America agreed to sign the “Taiwan Relations Act” to help Taiwan to protect itself and to consolidate its East Asian line of defense in the Cold War, the position of Jinmen and Matsu was left unclear.

For Chiang Kai-shek, Jinmen and Matsu had great significance. Located in the southwest and northwest parts of the Taiwan Strait, they could block Taiwan’s access to Xiamen, Fuzhou, and Sandu’ao (Guofangbu shizheng bianyiju 1996: 193). The islands were also of military importance in other ways. They allowed outposts of soldiers to carry out intelligence gathering and guerrilla warfare, as well as preparation for PRC counterattacks. Because they were so close to mainland China and had once belonged to Fujian province, their very existence as such could be claimed as evidence that Chiang Kai-shek was still in control of “China” (and not just of Taiwan). Chiang Kai-shek also believed that the strategic importance of Jinmen and Matsu could actually ensure America’s continuing support for Taiwan (Szonyi Reference Szonyi2008: 43). It was for these reasons that Chiang tried to construct an image of Jinmen and Matsu as symbols of a global fight against communism.

In China, Mao Zedong considered seizing Jinmen and Matsu. However,

Therefore, from 1958 to 1979, when diplomatic relations were established between China and the US, the People’s Liberation Army engaged in a special “one day on, one day off” (danda shuang buda) battle tactic, which allowed the defending forces in Jinmen and Matsu a chance to resupply. This also served to remind the US and Taiwan that both Taiwan and the islands of Jinmen and Matsu belonged to China (76).

“One Island, One Life”

How did the implementation of military rule, and in particular, the WZA, influence Matsu? As previously described, Szonyi’s research on Jinmen, another frontline island of Taiwan, demonstrated how militarization (Lutz Reference Lutz2001, 2004) infiltrated every aspect of Jinmen, and how the local society—whether in terms of the labor force, material goods, minds and bodies—was gradually molded to serve military goals. To understand the effects of military rule on Matsu, it is therefore important to note that it had a very different history from Jinmen before the army arrived. A brief reminder of Matsu’s transient and fragmented past, discussed in detail in Chapter 1, will aid in our discussion.

Matsu before 1949 was a forbidden outpost and a stateless society. The first official administration over the area was established only in 1934; even so, the responsible officer sent to the island was killed by bandits in less than two years. Matsu was quite lawless in the early part of the twentieth century and hostage to violent clashes between pirates, bandits, and warring international forces. Before the arrival of Chiang Kai-shek’s army, there were few links between the villages of the Matsu archipelago; rather, each was connected to Fujian separately. The people at that time were often temporary residents during the fishing season: they described the islands as merely their “outer mountains,” while their real “homes” were on the mainland. Not only were they ready to return “home” at any time, many important rites were performed on the mainland. For this reason, inter-village interactions were limited, and even within each village, different neighborhoods often remained independent from one another.

The establishment of the military administration in Matsu was thus unprecedented and totally transformed the islands. On the one hand, modernizing projects including power plants, reservoirs, fishery and agricultural improvement centers were initiated to augment local production capacities; and a new Matsu currency and the Regulation of Goods Department directed the flow of money and goods. On the other hand, intensive surveillance, including household registration and regulation of people’s movements, as well as normalization, such as schooling and other ideological controls, were implemented at the level of the individual. The islands were thus brought totally and abruptly under military control.

The Matsu archipelago, however, is spread along a stretch of 54 km of ocean. During a war, contact between the islands could be easily cut off. Even more important than developing the labor and resources of Matsu was the need to foster a spirit of independence so that each island could carry on the war effort on its own. When the army arrived, they quickly constructed ring roads on all the islands; military trucks served as means of public transport, running between villages to encourage interactions between locals. Important intersections were festooned with spirited slogans, such as “One island, one life—the army and the people are one family,” to indoctrinate the population and to promote a sense of solidarity (Fig. 2.2). The army also published an island newspaper, Matsu Daily. A shared daily rhythm thus appeared; an idea of simultaneity, provinciality, and even a common fate among the islands had emerged. A new consciousness on each island, and also on the archipelago writ large, had arisen: Matsu had become an imagined community (Anderson Reference Anderson1991[1983]).

Fig. 2.2 A carved slogan erected beside a Matsu transportation hub: “One island, One Life”

(Photo by the author)

The army’s large-scale modernization projects, from the paving of roads and island-wide forestation, to compulsory education, were jarringly new for the people who had long lived on the peripheral margins of the state. Since the Matsu Islands had always served as a temporary residence, the first facilities were rudimentary and shabby. The massive improvements of infrastructure, and the ubiquitous schools in particular, met with the people’s approval, to the extent that to this day they are grateful even today for the army’s contributions to these once-barren lands. Locals and soldiers gradually formed a sense of being “one community.” Although this concept was initially imposed by the army, it penetrated deep into the island’s social texture and the people’s minds.³ During this time, the islanders identified “Matsu” as a place of great military importance, “a springboard against communism” (fangong tiaoban), and “a protective shield across the Taiwan Strait” (taihai baolei), a notion which legitimized military control and justified the many sacrifices made by its people.

A Trail of Blood

Even so, it cannot be denied that the military state was an imposed power, one that was armed with physical and disciplinary force. How did the people of Matsu experience this abrupt intrusion? How exactly did this power weigh on individuals? The memories of the murder love triangle recounted above provides further clues.

The people of Matsu called the soldiers “lang a liang,” meaning “two different voices” in the local dialect, emphasizing the difference of their origins and languages from those of the islanders. The two men involved in the love triangle—the company commander, and Guoxing, who had been transferred there from Jinmen to work in the Matsu Distillery—were both outsiders. The new administration, the WZA, brought in such outsiders and set up institutions that had never before existed in these outlying islands. When locals recounted the event, they usually emphasized how Guoxing turned to different state institutions for help after he was injured: the port authorities, the county hospital, and the village administrative office (Fig. 2.3). This reveals how a once isolated world had by this time become a military state. The institutions Guoxing or the commander passed, such as the military intelligence post and the rice storehouse, had been set up as part of the war effort. These buildings obtruded everywhere in the village as physical manifestations of the intrusion of the military state in every aspect of life.

Fig. 2.3 The buildings and sites related to the crime⁴

The crime of passion also demonstrates how these state institutions were frequently inhumane and unconcerned with the plight of the local people. When Guoxing ran, dripping with blood, to the port authority to seek help, the soldiers made no attempt to assist him. He could only flee in a panic to the next place of possible aid, namely the army hospital. But since the military personnel there were regular nine-to-five workers, they had already gone home.

This story was narrated to me in detail by Cao Daming, who was fourteen or fifteen years old at the time of the murder. A child of a poor family, he began to work as a messenger boy for the local village office not long after he finished primary school. Encountering this tragic event at an impressionable age, he remembered it vividly, particularly the long trail of blood. The deputy village head was charged with investigating the causes of the murder and reporting back to the army. Cao accompanied him to examine the sites and timeline of the violent acts. That message boy is now over sixty, but he spoke of the events as though they had happened yesterday, becoming agitated and even beginning to stutter. When asked about his speech impediment, he answered that when he was a young boy, his family lived next to a room used for interrogation by the army, which often held “communist spies.” Curious, he would sometimes creep up to the room’s windows with his two brothers to watch the prisoners being tortured for information. He was still young and innocent at that time, and he and his brothers would imitate how the spies talked as they underwent water torture or were beaten:

Even today, he and his brothers still have a slight stutter. The scars left by military rule have not healed.

I heard this story not long after arriving in the village. Startled, I decided to scrutinize how military rule had changed the lived world of the islanders.

Circumscribed Spaces

What followed the imposition of military rule was a general sealing off of the islands. The people of Matsu used to be able to move about freely, but soon each island was encircled by military bases. The coastline of Nangan, for example, had ninety-five coastal military bases and checkpoints keeping watch over the open sea (Fig. 2.4).

Fig. 2.4 Military bases and checkpoints around Nangan, Matsu

(Revised from Zhongguo keji daxue 2007; Y. Chen Reference Chen2010)

Each inlet and all of the coastlines had layer upon layer of military defenses. Inlets were fortified with anti-landing spikes and shards of glass, and both sides of promontories were dotted with hillside military blockhouses. This fortification of village inlets (Cheng Reference Chen2010: 74) not only cut the islands off from one another, but also cut the local people off from the ocean. The sea-going Matsu people, who liked to collect shellfish during low tide, now had to pass through layers of wire fencing and landmine zones in order to get to the shore where they then risked being driven away by soldiers. For years, the people of Matsu born during military rule grew up as strangers to the sea. Here’s how Xie Zhaohua, a local doctor, describes his experience as a child:

In this passage, Xie Zhaohua’s allusion to the “many military encampments hidden in the mountains” is worth examining. The memories of old residents as well as photographs from the period show that in earlier days, trees were very sparse on the islands and hillsides were covered with thick cogon grass. According to records from 1956, “the whole island had only about twenty banyan and other trees, and the bare hills were covered in pale sand” (Fujiansheng lianjiangxianzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui 1986: 471). Thick vegetation, however, could also provide camouflage for military encampments and helped to prevent enemy fire from reaching its target; moreover, military activity could be carried out in secret behind the tree cover. Given this necessity for concealment, the WZA began to carry out continuous “Matsu forestation” projects, implementing measures of “rewards and punishment to promote forestation” (Weihu shumiao 1961). The military at one point even decided that sheep were an impediment to forestation, and promulgated an edict ordering the “elimination of sheep” (Tan lühua 1962). Not content with forbidding the grazing of sheep, the army announced that any sheep found grazing outside the allowed areas could be killed by any person (Y. Li Reference Li1998: 49; B. Yang Reference Yang, Liu, Li and Lin2014: 271–2). Liu Hongwen’s article “Sheep,” describes an incident that occurred at the time between a group of Matsu school children and a sheep:

After the sheep disappeared, the forestation of Matsu proceeded apace. Today Matsu is completely green, and each island has more than eighty percent forest cover (B. Yang Reference Yang, Liu, Li and Lin2014: 272). However, this also divided the island’s high-altitude areas from its low-altitude areas; the difference between the military encampments concealed in the mountain forests and the exposed villages along the inlets was thrown into stark relief. The history of the development of the villages of Matsu cannot be separated from the fishing economy. The villagers were fishermen and built their houses first around the inlets and then expanded out toward the mountain cliffs. Outside of the villages, the mountains were covered in trees, concealing military bases, blockhouses and encampments. From above, the soldiers stationed in the woods could maintain a clear sense of what was happening in the villages.

Foucault’s (1977) concept of panopticon can help us understand the power dynamics of this spatial arrangement: the Matsu villagers below could not see the soldiers hidden in the mountain forests, but the soldiers above could tell at a glance what was happening in the villagers’ lives, even knowing the comings and goings of any given individual. If we return to the crime of passion and examine it in terms of its location—Ox Horn—we find that there were three nearby encampments placed above the village, from which each household could be seen clearly. In other words, the company commander need only look down from his encampment to apprehend what was going on with his lover and his rival and prepare to ambush them. After Guoxing was stabbed and fled, the company commander knew Ox Horn so well that he could infer the route Guoxing would take to try to escape and felt no need to pursue him. He need only wait at a major intersection for his rival to return exhausted and weakened. The company commander’s gaze in this incident thereby represents the state’s panoptical power. The state could observe every villager, while also remaining invisible to the villagers. As an agent of the state’s panoptical nature, the company commander both created and enacted the state’s potential to see and to know.

If Foucault’s concept of the “panoptical” can help us understand the spatial structure of the military rule over these islands, then the execution following the love triangle murders shows us an example of state ceremony. Geertz (Reference Geertz1980: 123) says that the state draws its force from imaginative energies. From this perspective, it is clear why the state decided to publicly execute the company commander. Indeed, the set up was a carefully staged state ceremony: the company commander forced to wear a placard inscribed with his crimes and paraded around the village, the execution grounds filled with somber military police, the six pointed rifles, and the WZA’s order to shoot to the death. Its goal was to display, defend, and reaffirm the state’s power. Ironically, only the patriotic slogan shouted by the company commander before his death revealed the real executioner behind the scenes.

Sailing through Liminality

As one can imagine, with the islands closed off from the outside world, border-crossing became very difficult. During the military reign, strict controls were imposed on movements between Matsu and Taiwan. The application process to leave was very tedious:

Even after all of the aggravating paperwork, traveling by supply ship was a painful experience shared by nearly all the islanders. At that time, no civil vessels made the trip between Taiwan and Matsu, so Matsu residents heading to Taiwan had to take supply ships. A resident of Dongyin recalls that in the early days, a supply ship could take as long as a week to reach Taiwan: after leaving Dongyin, the ship first went to the administrative center in Nangan, and then headed back north to Beigan before proceeding to Dongju and Xiju. Only after it had circled all of the islands did it finally make its way to Taiwan. Although this detour was later shortened, one still considered oneself fortunate if one could make it to Taiwan within two days.

A long tedious journey was one thing, but what they encountered on the ship was really torturous:

It was just as agonizing to come back to Matsu from Taiwan. Migrants returning to Matsu first had to register at the Jinmen-Matsu Guesthouse (Jinma binguan) in Keelung and then wait. Sometime in the afternoon, if the guesthouse posted a sign saying “Departures Today,” everyone would prepare to board with relief. If no sign was put up, they would have to return the next day. The Jinmen-Matsu Guesthouse was provided for soldiers to have a place to stay on those days when the weather was too poor for the ships to sail. In general, ordinary citizens had to return to their residences each day until they could leave. For young people in particular, who had very little money to begin with, going back and forth a few times would easily exhaust their funds. Cao Daming recounts how he waited once for seven or eight days until he ran out of money and decided to sleep in an empty freight truck parked near the Jinmen-Matsu Guesthouse with his teenage friends. He woke up to realize that the truck was driving south. It turned out to be a vegetable truck from a nearby market, and the driver had stopped to rest before leaving early the next morning to pick up more produce. When the driver realized he had stowaways, he scolded them and shooed them off. The penniless young men could only put their heads together and try to figure out a way to get back to Keelung.

The passage between Matsu and Taiwan was like a liminal period, in which both the body and spirit were tested and transformed. As Turner has stated: “[D]uring the liminal period, neophytes are alternately forced and encouraged to think about their society, their cosmos, and the powers that generate and sustain them. Liminality may be…described as a stage of reflection” (Turner Reference Turner1967: 105, original italics). This kind of reflection happened not only during the journey on the ship, but also became deeply ingrained in people’s memories. The local leaders examined in Part III frequently begin with their painful experiences of such trips when explaining the impetus behind their desire to change Matsu.

Conclusion: Imagined Community vs. Individual Suffering

In 1949, the army abruptly arrived in Matsu and indelibly changed the fate of the islands. This chapter analyzes how military rule transformed the lives of the local people from the perspective of space. I have demonstrated that once the Matsu archipelago became a frontline in the war, the close connections that had previously existed between the islands and the mainland were severed. The WZA carried out large-scale construction projects, propagated public education to modernize the islands, and also employed print media and local currency to create pan-island connections. As a result, “Matsu” became a newly imagined community, with a new social imaginary as a “fortress in the Taiwan Strait” and a “springboard for anticommunism.” This imaginary gradually became the identity of the Matsu people.

If we examine the lives of individuals more closely, however, we see a different picture. The state came from afar and penetrated every aspect of the islands immediately and deeply: all kinds of military institutions (such as port bases, intelligence posts, and rice storehouses) mushroomed, and became integrated into the living spaces of locals. In the hills above the villages were secret military barracks, with their constantly surveilling eyes: the oversight and control of the state was ubiquitous. Anyone wanting to enter or leave the islands had to brave the torture of travel by sea. The crime of passion, Cao Daming’s stutter, the schoolchildren who lost their beloved sheep, and the sense of being close to the sea but estranged from it—all these examples demonstrate how the power of the state permeated people’s bodies, minds, emotions, and knowledge, clashing with them and creating conflicts and trauma.

The impact on individuals and society when a place becomes a frontline is complex and intricate. In Chapter 3, I will explore this issue further from the perspectives of the fishing economy and gender relations.

In descriptions of the love triangle murders, Xuemei’s husband never puts in an appearance. When I asked about him, the answers I got from residents of Ox Horn were always vague and ran along the lines of: “He was a fisherman”; “The fishing in Matsu wasn’t good, so he moved to Keelung (Taiwan).” Is the absence and silence of this fisherman husband connected in any way to the difficulties of the military period in Matsu?

Restricted Fishing and Imagination

Beginning with the establishment of the WZA, the proportion of the population involved in the fishing economy steadily declined (J. Wang Reference Wang2000: 165–6), with many fishing villages emptied out by emigration to Taiwan. Most of the Matsu people who moved to Taiwan came from fishing villages such as Beigan’s Qinbi and Qiaozi, Nangan’s Ox Horn and Jinsha, and Juguang’s Fuzheng and Tian’ao (S. Cao Reference Cao1978). Indeed, the implementation of military rule had a tremendous effect on the fishing economy, such that fishermen could no longer make a living. After Matsu was militarized, the unrestricted movement of fishermen on the seas was deemed a threat to national security; fishermen were seen as “internal enemies” and potential leakers of military secrets. The state started to implement a series of stringent rules and inspections to reduce any potential threat.¹ The procedure was as follows: anyone wanting to work in the fishing economy was required to apply to the village administrative office. Each applicant needed to supply three guarantors and was required to pass a clearance check before he could receive a fishing license.² A licensed fisherman had to register with the village administrative office the day before he wanted to go fishing and receive a day permit. Before he set out, the fisherman had to show his fishing license and permit to the port authorities and pass an inspection before the guards would return his oars (for sampans) or motor starter (for motorboats). Every fishing trip had to have at least three people, and the boat was required to return with the same personnel onboard (Z. Chen Reference Chen2013: 80). These layers of onerous restrictions served to control fishing on and off the water.

Military officials worried that once at sea, Matsu fishermen could come into contact with fishermen from enemy territory and leak military secrets, so they established fishing boundaries that could not be crossed. In addition to being assigned a serial number, fishing vessels were required to fly an official flag so as to be more easily monitored. If fishermen crossed over a boundary or were suspected of fishing outside the allowed zone, upon return they would be restricted from going out again for at least a week, face interrogation and sometimes torture, be subject to jail time, and could even be banned from the water for extended periods. When any boat returned to harbor, the port authorities would inspect it for contraband and again impound the oars or motor.

Given the enormous maritime area, however, there were necessarily sporadic gaps in military control and surveillance. Matsu fishermen had a keen sense of where they could go at sea to avoid the eyes of soldiers, and where they could have contact with fishermen from the other side of the Strait: “Sometimes, when the weather was good, we’d run into them and hide someplace we couldn’t be seen to chat. But when we came back, we wouldn’t dare talk about it…otherwise we’d be locked up!”³

Matsu and mainland fishermen behaved like old friends when together, conversing congenially, joking and laughing with each other. They shared a mutual understanding, and did not participate in the enmity between the KMT and the CCP:

Sometimes, however, the friendliness of the mainland fishermen would cause problems for the Matsu fishermen.

In this unique space on the water, the fishermen could temporarily escape military control and imagine they were still connected with the other side. On the ocean they found freedom and friendship, and shared small pleasures, but this space and imagination was always hidden, momentary, and evanescent. “Fishing is nothing but suffering!” (F. thoai ia siuai) was a cry heard from fishermen throughout the wartime period.

Indeed, if a vessel was even suspected of coming into contact with an enemy boat, military officials could easily impound the boat for days, but not going out to sea had a huge effect on the fishermen’s livelihood. In an interview with me, a fisherman from Tieban sorrowfully recounted:

Matsu Daily even recorded an order from the WZA chair demanding that fishermen gather at the Temple of Goddess Mazu to take an oath:

For 300 people whose entire livelihoods depended on fishing to condemn themselves before Goddess Mazu to never bringing home any fish or to dying in a disaster shows that there was considerable coercion behind the taking of this oath. There can be no doubt that it was made under duress.

Clock-in Clock-out Fishermen

Among the multiple layers of rules controlling the time that fishermen could spend at sea, it was the restriction of permitted hours of fishing which dealt the greatest blow to their livelihoods. Military authorities did not allow fishing at night: in the summer, boats could set out at 6 am and had to return by 7 pm; in the winter, the hours were from 4:30 am to 6:30 pm. However, many factors, including the variety of fish, the tides, weather, and routes were difficult to control and affected the timing of the boats. Delay in returning was the most frequent problem for fishermen. One of them said:

Fishermen from Ox Horn alluded to similar problems. The former village head told me: “It was often impossible to come back on time. If we got delayed, we’d give our biggest catch of the day to the harbor guard and beg him to let us back in.”

Controlling the hours of access to the harbors had the serious effect of limiting the number of times fishermen—in particular, the local shrimpers—could put their nets in the water. Cao Yaping’s (Reference Cao2017) research meticulously describes the close relationship between the fluctuations of the tides and the shrimp industry. The tidal range between the high water of high tide and the ebbing of low tide was particularly extreme in the ocean surrounding Matsu, and fishermen frequently used fixed nets to capture their most important catch, namely shrimp. Each day brought two cycles of high and low tides, and fishermen would calculate the timing before going out to gather shrimp. As one fisherman explained:

The fishermen said that when the tides weren’t moving, the nets would naturally float to the ocean surface, and that was when it was easiest to collect shrimp. If they didn’t pull the nets in promptly, the shrimp would suffocate and rot in the sun. But with the military restrictions in place, fishermen could only go out during the daytime. Where they used to bring in the nets four times a day, they now could only bring them in twice, seriously limiting their working time at sea. When I interviewed the highly experienced Tieban fisherman Chen Qizao, he told me that the rules restricted their time considerably. Fishermen often didn’t have time to bring their nets in properly, and when the water was high, the nets would easily tear, causing significant losses.

The army disallowing fishing at night not only reduced the daytime catch, it also presented an even bigger obstacle for fishermen who specialized in the kinds of fish, such as ribbonfish, that were caught at night. Some of these fishermen had no choice but to switch their speciality and invest in new fishing equipment. Fisherman Cao Qijie said: “Ribbonfish can only be caught at night…but later because of communist bandits…we couldn’t go out at night, and the fishermen all started to switch to shrimp fishing, which meant they had to buy new equipment. Most of us had to go into further debt when we hadn’t even paid off our old debts.”⁹

The purchase of fishing equipment and tackle presented another important dilemma for fishermen. In the past, the materials that fishermen needed to make their equipment, such as bamboo fiber and rice straw for rope, bamboo stalks, and wood, were all purchased on the mainland. A few months before the fishing season, they would begin to make their equipment: fishing rope, stakes, buoys, fishing nets, and so on. Approximately two months before the start of the season, fishermen would drive stakes into the seabed, which they used to anchor their nets when the fish arrived. (Z. Chen Reference Chen2013: 50–3, 85–6) (Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1 Picture of a shrimping net (with stakes, buoy, and net)

(Drawn by Chen Zhilong and Wu Shuhui)

In the past, maintenance of the boats and equipment relied on the mainland, but after relations between China and Taiwan were severed, fishermen could only turn to Taiwan. Taiwan is much farther from Matsu than the mainland, and conditions in the Taiwan Strait are dangerous and highly unpredictable; thus fishing supplies rarely arrived on time. After the WZA came into effect in 1956, fishermen faced serious difficulties for two successive years while there was no regularly scheduled movement of cargo ships between Taiwan and Matsu (J. Lin Reference Lin2013a). By that time, fishermen had already taken out large loans that they had no way of repaying. Matsu Daily recorded similar struggles that recurred year after year:

In addition to the lack of supplies, the export and sale of fish also became an issue. In the past, Matsu fishermen could efficiently ship their goods to Fuzhou. With the imposition of military rule, transportation and labor expenses rose precipitously; there was also insufficient cold storage. As a result, fishermen could only sell their catch to soldiers on the island or to dried fish vendors. Even in times of a bumper harvest, the market was extremely limited. Fishermen were forced to borrow from the government or depend on unreliable government aid year after year. Flipping through Matsu Daily, it becomes clear that poverty among fishermen in the 1960s and 1970s was widespread.

Uncertain supply lines, the harsh new rules imposed on the fishing economy, and the limited opportunities to sell their catch sent Matsu fishing villages spiraling into poverty, forcing them to rely on government aid. And what about the fishermen themselves and their families? A construction contractor in Ox Horn provided the most poignant image of their suffering:

When I returned from Matsu to Taipei in 2008, I went to see Guan Quanfu, who was born in 1920 (and passed away in 2016). People in Matsu told me that he had a lot of experience in the fishing economy. As chairman of the Fishing Association around 1960, he would be a useful source of information. Guan Quanfu had long since moved to Taipei, and when he heard that I wanted to ask him questions about the fishing economy, he immediately exclaimed: “The government…didn’t understand anything!” I asked him why, and he answered:

Curious, I asked him where the salt and alum came from. He replied:

Mr. Guan described a more lucrative system of exchange between fishermen on the southern islands and those living in the mountains of Fujian (indigenous peoples). This system was completely disrupted when the army arrived, and in order to survive, many islanders had no choice but to leave the islands.

“Carrying all their Possessions on a Pole to Taiwan”

Toward the end of the 1960s, Matsu people began to emigrate to Taiwan in large numbers. According to statistics, the population of Matsu was highest in 1970, at around 17,000 people. From that point on, people began to leave, and the population reached a low of 5,500 people around 1990 when military rule was abolished (Qiu and He Reference Qiu, He and Liu2014:16–18). Over twenty years, emigration reduced the population of Matsu by two-thirds. Why did so many people leave? Liu Hongwen’s (Reference Liu2017) The History of the Emigration of Matsu Villagers to Taoyuan informs us that whether it was an individual or a family that moved, the reason was the same: “There’s no way to live on Matsu; there’s no hope there” (F. mo leinguah, mo hiuong). This was why so many “carried all their possessions on a pole to Taiwan” (F. suoh ba piengtang tang suoh kaui kho teiuang).

There were many reasons why people from Matsu left for Taiwan. Although Matsu did not experience any actual battles, it was under constant threat. In the twenty-one years between 1958 and 1979, the “one day on, one day off” shelling from China led to many injuries and deaths and kept people in a state of constant terror. For Hu Shuiguan, who now lives in Bade, Taoyuan, the scars run deep. He lost his left leg in a bombing of the Matsu movie theater (located at the army recreation center) in 1969, and watched his youngest son die in front of him. His eldest son Hu Zongwei was sitting in another part of the theater and escaped this catastrophe. Hu Zongwei recounts:

Born in the same village as Hu Shuiguan, Zhang Yiyu was a construction worker who also worried about his family’s safety. After watching family after family leave, he moved his own to Taiwan as well.

The other reason people left was the shrinking fishing economy. As described, under the WZA fishing had become an increasingly arduous way of earning a living. In order to survive, many fishermen moved to Taiwan. As Chen Hanguang puts it:

Chen Deyu, who tried to modernize his fishing technique by buying a modern pair-trawler with a government loan, also ended up moving to Taiwan. He recounts:

In the early 1960s as the fishing economy contracted, people began to move to Keelung, the major port in northern Taiwan, to work as fishermen. Others moved to Taipei County (today’s New Taipei City) and largely ended up working as street vendors and laborers. The area that received the most immigrants was Bade in Taoyuan (74). Why was it able to accept such a large number of immigrants?

The Emigrants’ New Home

Looking at the area as a whole, Taoyuan County is a key industrial and manufacturing center in northern Taiwan. Several industrial zones are clustered there, and people from across the island came to find work during the early stages of Taiwan’s industrialization (see also W. Lin Reference Lin2015: 107–10). Later, foreign laborers were also drawn to the area, such that today the neighborhood around the railway station in Taoyuan is replete with Southeast Asian stores, creating a multinational mix of businesses and people (Z. Wang Reference Wang2006: 105).

Today’s Bade City in Taoyuan County was once known as Bakuaicuo (lit. “Eight Houses”) and became Bade only in 1949. It was once a farming area, but with the industrialization of Taiwan in the 1970s, the government began establishing industrial zones in Taoyuan (L. Lin Reference Lin2007: 112), and many factories were set up in Bade since there was a considerable amount of land there. By 1976, industry had already surpassed agriculture as the primary economic activity in Bade. As of 1988, nearly 60 percent of the people there were employed in this sector, of which the three main industries were the manufacturing of machinery, electronic components, and textiles (Z. Liao Reference Liao2008: 110–1). These flourishing industries meant ample employment opportunities, allowing more people to move to the area. The result of this rapid increase in population was that Bade was upgraded directly from a township (xiang) to a city (shi) in 1995, skipping the intermediate stage of town (zhen) entirely (W. Lin Reference Lin2015: 109) (Map 3.1).

Map 3.1 Bade in Taoyuan County

The opportunities provided by Bade’s busy industrial area encouraged many Matsu people to settle there. Some came because of family members, some based on the recommendation of neighbors or friends. They found work making textiles or clothing, or took all sorts of positions in steel mills, plastics plants, and tableware factories. The boss of the Lianfu Clothing Factory was a man from Fuzhou, and many of the immigrants from Matsu ended up taking jobs there after they heard his familiar Fuzhou dialect.

However, owing to the differences between the languages and cultures of Matsu and Taiwan, the people who settled in Taoyuan had a hard time adjusting at first. The Fuzhou dialect being their mother tongue, those from Matsu usually spoke heavily accented Mandarin. They did not speak or were largely unable to understand the Hokkien dialect popular in Taiwan, and so were alienated from the mainstream culture. When they spoke in their dialect to each other, however, they would speak volubly (from their habit of speaking loudly in their native island valleys), and their loud incomprehensible voices could give Taoyuan locals the impression of arrogance and aggression. Zhang Xiangfu, who worked in the Lianfu factory from the early 1970s until his retirement, told me:

Gradually, Matsu immigrants gathered in an area near the factories called Danan. A street there is named “Matsu Street,” with many stores selling traditional Matsu products. More such stores, selling all sorts of goods from Matsu, are located near the main market in Danan.

In general, however, those who emigrated to Taiwan are happy with their decision, despite the hardships they faced. For example, Liu Meizhu, an early immigrant says:

Beside the regular salaries, the people of Matsu often mentioned that the rice in Taiwan wasn’t the rationed rice they were used to, and that it tasted much better. Fowl was also cheaper and tastier than at home. The bright lights, new electronics, sturdy pavement, shiny tiles, and so on, all made them feel as though their lives had improved both spiritually and materially (H. Liu Reference Liu2017: 83).

Yet they still missed Matsu. They invited their deities to Danan, set up branch statues, and finally built the Longshan Temple (1970) and the Mintai Temple (1974). Every year, they held traditional Matsu festivities for the Lantern Festival, and established the Matsu Association to maintain their connections with their hometowns. In 2018, they even went so far as to build in Bade an exact duplicate of a Longshan temple from Ox Horn in Matsu.

Guaranteed Admission Program

As the fishing economy declined and fishermen emigrated, a new social category began to appear in Matsu: teachers and civil servants. Before 1949, education in Matsu relied primarily upon private teaching. Teachers were employed from the mainland to teach the traditional classics. At that time, most of the population was impoverished, and only those from relatively well-off families could afford to go to school, with a fraction of those wealthier students going on to middle or high schools (Y. Chen Reference Chen1999). Take Ox Horn as an example: the well-to-do Chen Lianzhu studied on the mainland and thus spoke Mandarin well. Under the WZA, he was a cultural and linguistic bridge between the military and the locals, and later he became the chairman of the Matsu Association of Commerce (S. Li et al. Reference Li2014).

When the army came to Matsu and discovered widespread illiteracy on the islands, they aimed for an ideal situation of “one village, one school” (yi cun yi xuexiao) and established elementary schools across the islands (J. Lin Reference Lin2013b). At that time, Matsu had no middle schools; once children finished elementary school, the best students were sent to Jinmen to continue their studies. With the implementation of the WZA in 1956, the first middle school on Matsu was built in 1957 and was intended to help improve the general educational level. The school was immediately faced with a shortage of teachers and its graduates with a lack of opportunities for further study. Of the very few teachers on the islands, most were soldiers from the mainland. When older Matsu people speak of their teachers, they frequently say: “The teachers at that time were all soldiers, they taught both Chinese and English.” To address the shortage of teachers, the WZA established the guaranteed admission program.

The guaranteed admission program was designed to help Matsu students go to Taiwan to study, guaranteeing them a tuition-free place without having to participate in the national test. The first year of Matsu middle-school graduates in 1960 numbered forty-eight, of whom twenty were sent to junior normal universities, as well as farming, fishery, business, and nursing schools.²⁵ When they finished their studies, they were required to return to Matsu to serve as elementary school teachers or to work in county government organizations for at least two years. With the opening of Matsu’s first high school in 1968, a series of students were sent to Taiwan via the guaranteed admission program. There was also another program designed to improve the quality of teaching. The returning teachers could apply and go to Taiwan again to study in normal universities (Guan Reference Guan2008), after which they could qualify to teach in middle or high schools.

Overall, these programs gradually produced a new category of educated people in Matsu, which superseded traditional family and lineage influences, and the dominance of those who had studied on the mainland. These people had a tremendous impact on Matsu, particularly after the dismantlement of the WZA, as will be discussed in detail in Part III of this book. Still, even during the WZA rule, we can see the effect of their return to villages and their assumption of teaching posts or positions in local government. Students of farming or maritime vocational schools could work in farming or fishing associations, or for agricultural development centers. Graduates of business schools could return to work in local government accounting bureaus. In this way, a new social category of teachers and government employees gradually arose in Matsu.

Even those who had only graduated from local elementary schools also began to have opportunities to work in local government organizations. They frequently worked at the lowest levels, responsible for the general administration of various offices with meager but secure wages. However, they could take the ad hoc civil service examination (quanding kaoshi) designed by the WZA to obtain further qualifications and slowly climb up the career ladder.

The Rise of the “Boss Lady”

By 1970, many from Matsu had moved to Taiwan, but some decided to remain behind. I asked those who remained why they stayed, and they replied along the following lines:

Indeed, at that time many Matsu people knew no one in Taiwan and had no practical way of moving there. At home, at least they could grow and sell vegetables, or sell fish and shellfish to soldiers. They describe this way of earning a living—doing “G. I. Joe business” (a’bing’ge shengyi) (Szonyi Reference Szonyi2008: 134)—as “supporting a family with one scale” (F. suoh ba tsheing yong lo suoh tshuo noeyng). Many businesses, such as snack and drinkstands, small grocery stores, billiard rooms, barbers, laundry services, public bathhouses, tailoring for uniforms, etc., arose to serve the needs of soldiers.

These businesses were frequently run by wives (Fig. 3.2). A woman from Shanlong who once ran a snack stand told me:

Fig. 3.2 Women at a market selling shellfish they have gathered

(Photo by Su Shengxiong, 1986)

Not only did the wives of low earners and fishermen begin working, it was also common to see wives of high-level government workers opening stores that catered to soldiers. For example, while the former county commissioner Cao Changshun was the principal of Jieshou middle school, his wife ran a shop selling stationery and Western medicine in Shanlong. Further, the wife of the chair of the County Council sold breakfast in the market for decades before retiring only a few years ago. Almost every woman participated in these businesses. A woman from Ox Horn who grew vegetables and went each day to Shanlong to sell them recounts:

Matsu was traditionally a fishing society, in which the men went out to fish and the women stayed at home to look after the family. They grew sweet potatoes, took care of animals, gathered firewood in the mountains, and did all kinds of household labor. Their husbands would frequently not return for days at a time (especially when they had gone to the mainland), and accidents at sea were common, so the wives or mothers of fishermen were often solely responsible for their households. As I mentioned earlier, Matsu has a saying: “A wife/mother is the hoop around the bucket” (F. lauma/nuongne sei thoeynɡkhu)—in other words, the wife or mother is the force binding the whole family together.

Nevertheless, it is indisputable that the status of women is low in most fishing societies. In the past, Matsu women primarily provided household labor, and since they could not go out to sea to fish like men, they were not able to make money for the family. Earning money being “a man’s work,” many elders said that men would apply this very rude phrase to curse their “disobedient” wives for their inability to earn even a cent: “Even if women pissed oil, men would still have to carry it to market!” (F. tsynoeyng niu na pienglau iu, toungmuonoeynɡ tang kho ma)

These traditional gender relations changed demonstrably under the WZA with the influx of soldiers and their consumer demands. Fisherman Liu Mujin says:

As we can see, in the military economy, women could go to the market early in the morning and sell vegetables or fish. Later in the day, they could go to the barracks to sell things or take the soldiers’ dirty clothes home to wash. They could also work in shops, or even open their own. Under the WZA, women not only took care of their households but also conducted business. They interacted with the soldiers and became an important source of income for their families.

Younger women even became a conduit to military goods for their families. People often said that coveted tickets for ships headed to Taiwan could be easily procured if a family had a daughter. H. Liu’s article (Reference Liu2016) of “Carrying Swill” describes how the older sister of his childhood companion drew the attention of military officers because of her good looks. At that time, most families on Matsu raised pigs, and everyone wanted to fatten them up by getting swill from the military camps. Not only did his pretty sister obtain swill for them, her whole family had steamed buns and meat to eat because of her connection to the soldiers. Eventually, she reluctantly married an officer around the same age as her father.

Young or pretty women could easily attract the attention of the soldiers or become objects of unwanted attention or even assault. Previous studies have shown how women become targets of sexual violence during times of war (Das Reference Das2008; Kelly Reference Kelly, Jacobs, Jacobson and Marchbank2000; Sanford, Stefatos, and Salvi eds. Reference Sanford, Stefatos and Salvi2016, to name only a few). For this reason, Xuemei, of the love triangle murders I described in Chapter 2, is rarely criticized by villagers. In fact, they usually sympathize with her for the difficulties she faced as an indigent fisherman’s wife. As Cao Daming commented while showing me the murder trail, “she may have been a bit open to other men, but what other options did she have?”

Despite the difficulties they faced, women under the WZA came to have new opportunities: they participated in the market economy, and gradually identified themselves with their businesses. The “boss lady” (laoban niang) was undoubtedly a significant female identity that came to prominence during the war era. For example, in the army there was a popular song called “My Home is on the mainland” (wode jia zai dalu shang) which described the homesickness felt by those soldiers who had followed the KMT government to Taiwan in 1949. The original lyrics began:

In Matsu, these lyrics were changed by the soldiers to:

“Boss Lady and Her Business” became a way for soldiers to sing about their feelings and attachments, above and beyond their longing for the motherland.

Women who worked outside of the home at this time also began to form their own business associations, such as the “Thirteen Golden Hairpins” (shisan jinchai) of the Shanlong market. The Thirteen Golden Hairpins was by no means the earliest market organization—the “Fourteen Brothers and Sisters” (shisi xiongmei) already existed—but it was the energy of these new women members that first attracted greater attention, and soon such sister groups began to gain popularity across Matsu.

The members of the Thirteen Golden Hairpins were women who sold vegetables, fish, dried goods, and frozen foods inside the Shanlong market, and ran breakfast stands, bakeries, and small groceries outside the market. In the beginning there were thirteen women, but the number gradually increased to fifteen. They set out together as businesswomen from a young age, grew up, and married all around the same time. Maintaining frequent interactions, they gradually became a solid community. I asked them at what point they had sworn sisterhood with each other, and they said: “We’ve been together from the beginning. It was probably thirty or forty years ago, at some festival when we put on two feasts together, that we formally declared ourselves sisters.”²⁶

They saw each other every day at the market, and whenever one had an important event such as a wedding or funeral, they would all join in to help. After their economic situation stabilized, they learned dance together, sang karaoke, played cards, and even now, in their old age, still travel together. One local man said:

As their old dance teacher pointed out:

The local temple recognized their impact and named the head of their organization to an honorary post at the temple, circumventing a vote by the all-male temple council. The WZA chair also took notice of their importance, and would formally invite them to dine with him, even including them in his New Year’s celebrations.

These women always speak of their work spiritedly. For instance, the “squad leader” (banzhang) of the Fifteen Golden Hairpins told me proudly:

When I asked them why it was that women had to undergo the most hardship, the second Hairpin, whom people called erjie (second eldest sister), spoke passionately:

The second Hairpin clearly pointed out that a woman’s business during the military period was her “career,” having importance both for herself and for her family. She also used the metaphor of the small stones to suggest that although women might be physically smaller than men, they held an important part of the responsibility for keeping their families going. Her self-confidence is obvious. Matsu women like the compliment of being called “capable” (F. ia puong nëü), indicating that they are competent, skillful, and able. To call a wife or a mother “capable” is to praise her ability to run a household: able to give orders, delegate work, and turn a profit. Nearly every Matsu woman was a skillful budgeter and could adjust her business to meet the needs of the soldiers. Any money they made was invested in local money-loan associations. When it reached a certain amount, it would be used to purchase property for their children in Taiwan (or also Fuzhou after martial law was lifted). As their economic contribution increased, so too did their status.

Influenced by the Fifteen Golden Hairpins, women across Matsu began to organize. Not only did the women on the snack street in Matsu Village (located on the western side of Nangan Island) organize into the “Twelve Sisters” (shier jiemei), but the women of Ox Horn also formed the “Sorority of Twelve.” The mothers of Ox Horn danced together, played the clappers in rituals, and got involved in local matters. In fact, I once went with them to clean up the seashore, and saw how they helped collect ocean detritus. The Sorority of Twelve, however, was in some ways distinct from the Golden Hairpins of Shanlong or the Twelve Sisters of Matsu (village). Most of the Sorority worked not at their own businesses but in government kitchens or at the Matsu distillery, either as laborers or as service workers. The reason for this was likely connected to the love triangle crime described in Chapter 2. After the murders took place, Ox Horn was declared a “restricted zone” (jinqu), and the roads into the village were stationed with guards who prevented soldiers from entering. The decline of the fishing economy was already a blow to this fishing village, and things worsened once it was declared a restricted zone. The stores of the earlier business area, Da’ao (Big Inlet), had to shut, and many of those who wanted to do business opened shops in the market at Shanlong, the neighboring village. The former village head told me that when the government decided to establish a market on the island, the people of Ox Horn pushed hard to be chosen as the site. But because the village did not have enough space, the market went to Shanlong instead. The laborious and menial jobs, taken of necessity by the Sorority of Twelve, demonstrate the deterioration of this village’s economy.

In Shanlong in 2009, I met Cao Xiaofen, the “boss lady” of a florist’s shop (I shall discuss her further in Chapter 7). Like many women on Matsu, after graduating from elementary school, she worked as a clerk at a bookstore in Shanlong and ended up marrying a man from the area. Her husband’s family raised chickens and ran a restaurant, and she was kept very busy each day helping with the work. As the G. I. Joe business became increasingly competitive, she left Matsu in 1976 to work in a clothing factory in Bade, Taiwan. When her husband took ill, he went to Taiwan for treatment; she took care of him and engaged in some minor business to support her family. After her husband died, she had the chance to study floriculture, which she enjoyed, but unfortunately her son fell ill. After many years of toil, she herself was diagnosed with cancer. With the help of her family back in Matsu, she returned home to recover. Having gone from Matsu to Taiwan and back again, she shared her observations with me:

Returning to Matsu helped her recover from her illness, and inspired by her friends, she opened a flower shop with a café and taught floriculture. The media reported that she had “returned to her hometown to finally live for herself” (J. Liu Reference Liu2004c). Even today, we can see vigorous boss ladies arriving at the markets early to buy ingredients for their restaurants catering to Matsu’s burgeoning tourism. There are also some female graduates from high school or college who have formed cultural organizations and participate actively in Matsu society nowadays.

Conclusion: Men and Women during the War Period

During the WZA period, the fishing economy in Matsu confronted severe challenges. As Taiwan began the process of industrialization in the 1970s and required a greater labor force, many Matsu locals moved there—mostly to Taoyuan—to work in factories. Those who stayed behind on the islands shifted their forms of livelihood to offering services and goods to the military. The guaranteed admission program and obligation to return home to work also introduced a new social category of government employees and teachers to Matsu. They would come to exert a tremendous influence on the future of Matsu, as I will discuss in Chapters 8–10.

Under the WZA, women also faced circumstances utterly different from those seen in the past. In the fishing society, men had made the primary contribution to the family finances by going out to sea, while women, who maintained the household, held a lower social status and were offered few educational opportunities. The military economy, however, opened up new possibilities for women. The G. I. Joe businesses, as Szonyi (Reference Szonyi2008:140) pointed out, were part of the militarization of the war period; female labor in Matsu was mobilized, as it was in Jinmen, to provide goods and services to soldiers. However, the changes the women of Matsu experienced differed from those in Jinmen. On the one hand, the new role of women, as in Jinmen, did not subvert traditional patrilineal ideology: the members of the Fifteen Hairpins were mothers first and foremost. They did not try to usurp the position of their husbands as head of the household, nor did they show great enthusiasm for temple politics. On the other hand, their role as boss ladies and their brisk business with the army gave them different possibilities outside of the patrilineal authority. The Fifteen Hairpins not only challenged the traditional Matsu view that singing and dancing were for “loose women,” their collective power even induced the elders and military leaders within the patrilineal society to acknowledge their contributions. Finally, they were given their own honorary posts in the temple without being subject to a vote by the all-male temple council. These differences from the women in Jinmen are related to the islands’ differing histories: the lineage organizations on Matsu were never as strong as on Jinmen, given Matsu’s long history as a temporary stopover for fishermen.

In many ways, the development of the women of Matsu was more along the lines of the Taiwanese or mainland model of the “female entrepreneur.” Gates (Reference Gates and Perry1996, Reference Gates1999) describes how petty capitalism offered women, both in Taiwan and in the mainland, more autonomy and social power. Simon (Reference Simon2004) also points out that in Taiwan, boss ladies often stressed that their businesses endowed them with free space in which to live. Not only could they contribute to the family income, they could also go beyond their household and develop new connections with the larger society. Under the WZA, the lives of the women of Matsu were in important ways different from the earlier days.

In many places, gambling is taken as a sign of moral decline. Persistent gambling can lead to addiction or a loss of self-control and has the potential to engender serious social problems. This chapter examines gambling from the perspective of Matsu’s ethnography. I locate the Matsu people’s gambling habits in the context of the island’s ecology and society, showing that early on gambling was embedded in the fishermen’s lives. It was elaborated during the WZA era to coordinate with the oppressive and tedious rhythm of a society tightly controlled by the army. I argue that gambling in warzone Matsu was not only a cultural metaphor (Geertz Reference Geertz1973) or a form of social resistance (Scott Reference Scott1985), but also an emotional outlet and imaginative practice by which the islanders escaped, ridiculed, and even and contended with the military state.

Gambling and Fishing

Gambling has been a part of Chinese life for a very long time, both in China itself and in Chinese emigrant societies (Watson Reference Watson1975; Basu Reference Basu1991). Matsu is no exception. Before 1949, the men in Matsu had a tradition of drinking and gambling. Whether after an exhausting day out at sea, or while waiting for the tide, drinking and gambling were diverting ways to pass the time and constituted the main form of male entertainment on the islands. Gambling, unlike the labor of women in the domestic space, was a communal activity. As they drank and gambled, men exchanged fishing information and current social news, and created, demonstrated, and reaffirmed their social connections. A man who did not drink or gamble showed that he had neither money nor power. As a Matsu saying reveals:

Yet fishing and gambling are in fact mutually implicated at an even deeper level. The senior boat captains I interviewed, who have closely observed the fisherman lifestyle, all pointed to the fact that fishing is inherently a form of gambling. Fishermen are different from farmers who work the land; out at sea, they must confront a host of unpredictable factors, such as ocean currents, wind direction, weather, and so on, all of which can change on a dime. Fishermen not only have to be highly adaptable; they must also be resolute and fearless in the face of danger. Gambling involves a high degree of luck and a “winner take all” mentality that is closely complementary to the fishing experience. For this reason, gambling was more than just entertainment; it was also a training ground (Chu Reference Chu2010: 267), and a way of cultivating bravery and daring in fishermen.

When a comparison is made with agriculture, the connections between gambling and fishing become even clearer. Engaging in farming requires land, and it relies upon a farmer’s patience during lengthy periods of cultivation before crops can be harvested. Preservation of property and harvest from year to year is the main method of building wealth in an agricultural society, which lacks the possibility of sudden windfalls. Fishing societies operate very differently. Fish multiply in the sea without having to be cultivated, and catching them depends not only on skill, but also on luck. When the opportunity arises, one must quickly “grab as much as one can” in order to have any chance of an “unexpected windfall.” Gambling, therefore, is inherent in the fishing livelihood.

Indeed, on such far-flung islands where one had to struggle with the sea for an unpredictable livelihood, life was more dangerous than in an agricultural society. Anyone who was not brave enough to take substantial risks was unlikely to achieve a breakthrough. This notion is reflected in the Matsu saying:

Although a prodigal son may admittedly squander away the family fortune, his risk-taking behavior also demonstrates that he can tolerate danger, think quickly, and seize an opportunity when it arises. In contrast, a “foolish son” only consumes a family’s assets and is often caught off guard by unexpected events.

However, since uncontrolled gambling can clearly be ruinous to the family, the Matsu people also emphasize:

This expression indicates that in both gambling and in illicit sexual relations, one must first be certain of one’s own limits. Again, the point is not to forbid gambling, but rather to achieve a balance so as not to destroy oneself. In sum, gambling represented the adventurous or even audacious character of the islanders. It was not only the main entertainment or social activity for fishermen; the luck, skill, and inherent spirit of risk that it entails also capture what men needed to equip themselves when facing the perils of the capricious ocean.

“Gambling is the Origin of All Vices”

Perhaps owing to worries about people gathering together and causing trouble, or concern about fostering addiction, the army detested gambling from the start. Nearly every year, Matsu Daily reported on the ban on gambling and the arrest of gamblers. A 1959 article already announced strict punishments for gambling:

In order to rid Matsu of gambling, the WZA held endless meetings to discuss the problem of “how to eradicate gambling.”² A 1969 decree entitled “Implementation of a complete gambling ban,” stated that government employees and teachers caught gambling would not only be dismissed, but also that their work unit supervisor would be given a first level demerit. If common people were caught gambling, businessmen would be forced to close their businesses, while fishermen would be kept off the sea for a period of a week to a month. Others would be punished according to the specific circumstances with forced labor, jail time, or fines. Often, the newspaper would publish the names of offenders along with statistics about their professions. For example, a 1972 Matsu Daily article recounts that police had apprehended:

What is worth noting in this report is the appearance of government officials and women as gamblers, a subject that I will revisit in the next section.

Nearly every year the police would publicly burn gambling paraphernalia, and the WZA chair would be at the scene to personally supervise and express how seriously the authorities viewed the issue.⁴ The authorities’ attitude reveals the state’s deep anxiety about losing control over gatherings of locals. Despite their intense efforts, however, the official ban on gambling had only a limited effect.⁵ As Matsu Daily reported:

In this situation, authorities could only implement increasingly harsh laws. For instance, the importation and sale of books about gambling and articles that could be used for purposes of gambling (such as mahjong tiles, Chinese dominos, dice, and four-colored cards) were tightly controlled:

The WZA also regularly announced new rules and increasingly severe punishments. By the end, anyone who worked for the government—including all office workers, maintenance workers, service workers, and other employees—would be fired immediately if found to be engaging in gambling activities.⁸ A year later (1983), there was even an announcement that people who were apprehended three times for providing venues for gambling to soldiers would be expelled from the islands and not allowed to come back. The newspaper denounced the behavior forcefully: “Gambling is the origin of all vices.”⁹

As officials engaged in this cat-and-mouse struggle against local custom, however, gambling became a kind of shared knowledge between officials and locals. While officials thought of every means possible to enforce a ban against gambling, they also used it as a kind of larger metaphor. For example, in an interview that the WZA chair granted a Taiwanese reporter, he told the following story:

In the story, Confucius is unlucky, and he does not manage to win any money. When his luck finally changes, he is able to collect tiles for the “four directions,” along with a “red tile.” If he can collect a second red tile, he will win. Unexpectedly, in a moment of carelessness, Confucius gives up his red tile and ruins his potentially winning hand. To educate people, the WZA chair used the “red tile” as a metaphor for the Republic of China, demonstrating that mahjong had already become a form of shared knowledge for the government and locals, as well as a medium for communication.

Lightening the Drudgery of Military Rule

In contravention of the government ban, gambling during the military period extended to all walks of life, and its significances multiplied.

Killing Tedium

“The harder they tried to catch us, the more we gambled” (zhuade yuejin, dude yuexiong), many Matsu residents said. Moreover, while in the past it was mainly fishermen who engaged in gambling, the practice now spread beyond any specific group. Even government officials and teachers began to participate during the WZA period. Matsu Daily’s reports of repeated government orders regarding civil workers show how much of an issue it was. Workers at the Matsu Distillery, the Regulation of Goods Department, and the publishing office of Matsu Daily were caught gambling and named in the newspaper. Yet despite constant government threats, as well as severe punishments including dismissal, people continued to gamble. A man who worked for the Matsu Electric Company recounted the situation at the time:

Back then, we never put away our office mahjong table.¹¹ When the lunch break began, everyone would rush to the table to get a spot. In order to keep a seat, some even skipped lunch completely.

“Why were people so crazy about gambling?” I pressed.

I don’t know. It felt like that was the only way we could get through the day.

It seemed as if only by playing mahjong could one alleviate the boredom of civil service under military rule and make life bearable.

By examining the Supply Cooperative, we can go a step further in understanding the connection between the drudgery of life under military rule and gambling. The Supply Cooperative was a special work unit under the WZA that managed the circulation of supplies within the islands. Its head, deputy head, and section chiefs were all appointed by the military authority, while Matsu locals were employed in subordinate positions as ordinary personnel. Thus, the Supply Cooperative was partly a military entity: at the beginning of each day, workers raised the national flag and did morning exercises before beginning work. Even today, at the old site of the Supply Cooperative, one can see the flagpole towering over the middle of the complex (Fig. 4.1).

Fig. 4.1 The main building of the Supply Cooperative

(Photo by the author)

The Supply Cooperative was responsible for regulating all the important supplies on the islands. Aside from rice, which was controlled directly by the military, all of the goods necessary for daily life such as wheat, sugar, different kinds of alcohol, and construction materials like steel bars and concrete had to be purchased from the Cooperative. One might say that the Supply Cooperative was an enormous warehouse (Fig. 4.2).

Fig. 4.2 The spatial layout of the Supply Cooperative

Work at the Supply Cooperative took place nearly around the clock. In addition to keeping regular working hours, the warehouse also had to be guarded at all times. If supply ships from Taiwan arrived, there had to be workers to go to the docks to receive and unload the goods. Consequently, workers took turns working the night shift, and slept inside. Each worker was expected to work at least one night-shift per week, and often more. The Supply Cooperative had its own kitchen, which prepared three meals a day for the personnel, and staff members slept in the office building. Table 4.1 shows how the staff spent their days and nights.

Table 4.1 Daily Schedule of the Supply Cooperative

Time	Activities
7:30 AM	Breakfast
8:00 AM	Flag Raising and Morning Exercises
8:30-12 PM	Work
12:00-1:30 PM	Lunch and Rest
1:30-3:30 PM	Work
3:30 PM	Outdoor Exercise
5:30 PM	Dinner
6:00 PM	End of the Shift, or Additional Nightshift

Personnel at the Supply Cooperative were required to arrive before 7:30 am to eat breakfast together, raise the flag, do morning exercises, and work until the afternoon. After dinner, some workers could go home, but many had to stay on for a nightshift. In order to break up the tedium, the head of the Cooperative included half an hour of rest in the day, usually for outdoor exercise such as basketball games (see the two basketball nets in Fig. 4.2).

Still, this dull, monotonous lifestyle was alleviated by many secret opportunities for different forms of gambling. For example, during the noontime rest, some workers would place small bets over cards or chess. At 3:30 pm, they would make bets over basketball games. There were more chances in the evenings, when they could play mahjong together. The air-raid shelter behind the Cooperative was a paradise for workers. They would run an electrical wire into it and hang lights to help pass the endless night. After an intense night of playing mahjong, however, they would often find the electrical line cut the next morning—a warning from an unhappy commander. The next night they might resist the temptation to play and go back early to sleep.

How the workers turned the officially approved pastime of “basketball playing” into “basketball betting” right under their commanders’ eyes is fascinating. Figure 4.3 shows how it was was done. The painted restricted area had nine positions; once everyone got into position they would dribble a few times, and then with meaningful glances, they would start to bet. Frequently four people would play together, sometimes with each person taking ten shots per turn and the highest points determining the winner. The more common way of playing was for each player to take turns making single shots. If the ball did not go in the basket, the person would remain in place. If it did go in, the person would advance from position 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, and so on. The person who made it to position 9 would win, and the rest of the players would pay up according to their position, owing 100, 200, or 300 Taiwanese dollars. The monotony of life in the Supply Cooperative was brightened by these different forms of gambling.

Fig. 4.3 “Betting on Basketball”

“They Just Cannot Catch Us!”

“But didn’t the government control gambling strictly and constantly burn the equipment?” I asked. “What did you do if you didn’t have anything to use to gamble?” One of older policemen mentioned earlier told me:

Other interlocutors spoke over each other excitedly:

Gambling in these descriptions became an audacious practice by which people imagined themselves escaping the clutches of the state, creating their own rhizomorphic space (Deleuze and Guattari Reference Deleuze and Guattari1987) and time beyond the control of the military. In the fishing period, Matsu islanders gambled with the ocean; now, they were gambling with the state. They endured and contended with military rule in terms of their gambling culture.

Yellow Croaker and Dominos

Gambling also developed into a kind of ceremonial practice in the military period, particularly during the yellow croaker fishing season in Dongyin. Yellow croaker is a lucrative species found along coastal China, with its fishing grounds spreading south towards the open sea; it is prized for its meat, which is as tender as tofu. They migrate in schools, and Dongyin was on their reproductive migratory route, thereby forming an important fishing ground. Yellow croaker came from the southeast to the Dongyin area from April to June each year, making up the main fishing season for this variety in Matsu (Z. Chen Reference Chen2013:102). Since the 1980s, however, the species has mostly disappeared from the area because of over-fishing.

Before its depletion, the fishermen of Dongyin had a long tradition of catching yellow croaker. Local elders said that earlier in the spring fishing season, fishermen from costal China would come to fish and sell their catch to the mainland. After the separation of the PRC and the ROC, the fishermen of Dongyin were limited to selling their catch to the soldiers on the islands. When supply exceeded demand, they could only resort to drying the surplus fish. In the late 1960s, some Taiwanese ships with cold storage sensed a business opportunity and began to come to Dongyin to purchase fresh fish. Finally, the Matsu Fishing Association came to a negotiated agreement with the shipping companies, according to which they had to place competing bids and guarantee that the winner would buy the entire catch at a set price, irrespective of how much fish was caught. Thus, when the fishing season was good, fishermen could make quite a bit of money. At that time, when the fishing industry operated on cash transactions, catching yellow croaker could mean a welcome windfall. Beginning in 1968, fishermen from across the islands of Matsu came to Dongyin in pursuit of this fish. Before leaving, they had to undergo three days of ideological training in which they learned about the “savagery of the communist bandits” (gongfei baoxing) before being allowed to prepare for their journey. When they set out, officials would come down to the wharf to send them off, setting off firecrackers to wish them a successful return.¹²

Fishermen said that yellow croaker would rise close to the surface during high tide, and so were relatively easy to catch. The high tides on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar calendar were the most anticipated fishing days for yellow croaker. During the breeding season, the air bladders of the fish vibrate and let off sounds that attract members of the opposite sex. In a particularly crowded school, the noise can sound like boiling water or wind blowing through pines (J. Liu and Qiu Reference Liu and Qiu2002). When there were few fish detectors to locate the fish, fishermen would often rely on the sound of the school to estimate its size. There is a common saying which is used to mock overly talkative people in Matsu. It alludes to the way in which the fish give themselves away with their own noises: “the Dongyin yellow croaker is betrayed by its own mouth” (F. toeyng’ ing uonghua khoeyh tshui hai).

Just because the croaker made revealing noises did not mean that every fishing expedition was successful, however. Even if a captain was skilled at determining the location of the fish from their sound, there was also the question of unpredictable weather and tides, along with other unforeseen factors, so that even the most experienced captain could not guarantee a catch. All the boats went out at the same time and cast their nets in the same vicinity, yet some returned with a good catch, while others barely broke even. One highly experienced captain from Dongyin told me that when the yellow croaker gathered and made a lot of noise, many boats would arrive in the area. But where exactly the fish were at any moment was difficult to discern, and so catching them was a matter of luck (see also Q. Chen Reference Chen2009; Yan 1977). He drew a picture to explain (Fig. 4.4). Boat B is the most fortunate, since its net is cast right in the midst of the school of fish, and so it returns with a full catch; boat A is a bit too far to the left, but it likely still makes a decent catch; but boat C is too far too the right to have much hope of catching anything.

Fig. 4.4 A sketch of fishing boats trying to net yellow croaker

Indeed, the Dongyin fishermen say that whenever they caught yellow croaker, it was like “hitting the jackpot,” and “the excitement of the chase was just like gambling.” During a successful fishing expedition, “the fish floated on the surface of the water like chunks of ice you could walk on” (Q. Chen Reference Chen2009).¹³ Chen Qizao, a fisherman from Tieban, Nangan, described a big catch:

The Dongyin boat captain mentioned above also told me that once when he went out in a pair trawler to fish for yellow croaker, he caught 40 tons of fish. “I spent a whole day raising the fish out of the water, that’s how much there was!” He decided to steer the boat directly to Keelung Harbor in Taiwan to sell the fish and made NT$4,000,000 in one go. He continued:

Knowing how extravagantly a yellow croaker catch was celebrated in Taiwan, it is unsurprising that when the fishermen returned to shore they held big gambling parties. Either to test their luck once more or to celebrate a good catch, the fishermen who caught croaker usually gambled heroically. They bet extravagant amounts and were indifferent to loss: the real purpose behind their gambling was display, and to show off rather than to consolidate their earnings.

During the yellow croaker season, fishermen liked to play Chinese dominoes (the locals call it pi peou), which was usually played during the Lantern Festival, the biggest festival on the islands. The ceremonial atmosphere of the croaker catch is therefore significant. During the game, the dealer hands out four tiles to each player, and the players lay them out in two pairs to compare their values with the dealer in fast-paced rounds. Although there are only four players in any given game, others could also place stakes on any of them being the winner. During the catch season, the tables would be crowded with onlookers. There were at least three layers of participants at each table: the people actually playing the game formed the closest ring, the second ring was made up of those taking stakes in the game, and the third ring was observers standing on stools, all forming a noisy excited crowd. There was no limit on bets: a lot of money was quickly won and lost in each game, and the atmosphere was heated and charged with excitement.

The games of Chinese dominoes during the croaker season could be seen as a ritualistic activity. Precisely because of this ceremonial nature, the military tended to look the other way and not shut the games down. But because of the high stakes, fishermen would sometimes gamble away an entire season’s hard-earned income. At the time, there was a popular saying:

You cry when you catch croaker, and you cry when you don’t.

(F. uong’ ua huah ya thie, mo huah ya thie)

The expression describes the difficulty of catching yellow croaker, and the misery of easily losing it all at the gambling table.

By the time the season was over, many had lost nearly all of their earnings (Q. Chen Reference Chen2009). A man from Ox Horn, the son of a fisherman, told me that when he was young his father spent two months in Dongyin each yellow croaker season, yet he always came back with empty pockets. I asked him why his father continued to participate if he didn’t earn any money from it, and he told me: “That’s just part of being a fisherman, he couldn’t not go.” Owing to depletion, the yellow croaker faded into the annals of history after 1985, but elders still remember the season and their Chinese domino games as though it were yesterday.

Conclusion: Gambling with the State

Anthropologists have discussed the significance of gambling from different perspectives. Earlier it was considered a metaphor for other aspects of social life (Geertz Reference Geertz1973). More recently, it has been analyzed as a form of symbolic resistance to the state (Papataxiarchis Reference Papataxiarchis, Day, Papataxiarchis and Stewart1999) or as a way of engaging with uncertainty (Davis Reference Davis2006; Malaby Reference Malaby2003). Gambling in Chinese society, especially mahjong, has also received considerable attention. Scholars have elucidated the cultural content of mahjong: notions such as fate, luck, and skill, and how they form analogies and affinities to other aspects of society. For example, mahjong bears a likeness to business adventures among the Chinese migrants in India (Basu Reference Basu1991), while in Taiwan, mahjong “agonistics” and the vibrant political culture were mutually reinforcing (Festa Reference Festa2007). In the twenty-first century, gambling is still very popular in the Chinese countryside: it is a way for the villagers to engage with the authoritarian state and with neoliberalism (Bosco et al. Reference Bosco, Liu and West2009), or for Fuzhounese migrants’ wives it is a way to escape loneliness (Chu Reference Chu2010). It is also, however, a means of contending with the boundaries between old and young, rural and urban, local sociality and state discourse for the people in Enshi, Hubei province (Steinmüller Reference Steinmüller2011).

My analysis, different from previous scholars, examines the changing significances of gambling practices: that is, I discuss how gambling in Matsu developed from a leisure activity for men in the fishing society to an everyday practice of the general population during the military’s reign. During the WZA period, gambling was no longer limited to a particular time, space, or group of people (Basu Reference Basu1991), but extended to all levels of society (from the WZA chair and government functionaries to the lowest rungs of society) and involved both men and women. It could vary from the public dominoes played by fishermen to people hiding cards under the table at civil defense training, and from the ritualistic to the ordinary. That is, it became “a way of life” in Watson’s words (Reference Watson1975: 168). Various forms of gambling corresponded to the life rhythms of different people. Lengthy games of mahjong livened up the dull routines of low-level government workers under the WZA. Rapid dice games could offer a brief respite to women during their hectic days engaging in G. I. Joe business. The excitement and betting involved in Chinese dominoes mimics and re-enacts the risks and festivity of the precious fishing season. These different forms of gambling responded to the social dynamics across all professions during military rule.

However, the reasons gambling proliferated go well beyond its analogies with other social aspects or its role in negotiating the boundaries between the governed and the ruling state, as other scholars have argued. During the years of tedious drudgery that the islanders were expected to endure under the WZA, gambling was a way to give vent to the boredom of routine and to relieve the tedium under an otherwise stifling military rule. Gambling was thus an emotional outlet—a stage for enacting humor, ridicule, and anger, and an imaginative practice with which to evade the iron control of the military.¹⁵

Nevertheless, the people of Matsu were still forced to the extremes of the islands—clammy tunnels, bleak graveyards, and deserted pigpens—to find room to breathe. As we can surmise, their rise against military rule was imminent.