In the 1980s, many Matsu people were greatly encouraged by the burgeoning Taiwanese democracy movement.¹ Like the Taiwanese opposition, they used publications, demonstrations, and elections (Rigger Reference Rigger1999: 113) to convey their dissatisfaction with military rule. The Matsu opposition movement did not end with elections, however. Dissidents sustained their efforts, and in the twenty-first century introduced new media technologies to Matsu, eventually resulting in reforms that went beyond politics. This chapter discusses how these technologies have generated a new imaginary of Matsu which is different from that of the military period. I show how an internet community has taken shape, in which Matsu people can break up the tightly-knit social networks on the islands to develop new online selves. While it is certainly the case that different netizens have varied ways of using internet media, within this community a special intimacy with and affect for “Matsu” are engendered and assimilated, and social actions are initiated. Internet technologies have transformed Matsu from peripheral fishing islands and a military frontline into a place with its own unique values.

The Matsu Democracy Movement

The government’s guaranteed admission program laid the foundation for the Matsu Democracy Movement. As I indicated in Chapter 3, this program sent Matsu’s top students to study in Taiwan. Many of them were inspired by democratic ideas there and later led the protests for democracy in Matsu. Cao Yuanzheng is one of the pioneers in this movement among the wave of students. During his studies at a normal university in Taiwan, he was motivated by democratic ideas and came to understand the injustices brought about by the WZA in Matsu (Y. Cao Reference Cao2012). In 1983, he raised funds to establish a magazine, called Matsu Light (Matsu zhi guan), and began criticizing the WZA; he proposed holding popular elections, allowing for tourism, ending restrictions on citizens leaving the islands, and abolishing military rule, along with other important reforms. Cao later invited Liu Jiaguo, a frequent contributor to Matsu Light, to be the editor of the journal, and the two began to propagate democratic ideals through their publication.

Liu, who hails from Dongyin, had been sent to Taitung High School in Taiwan after elementary education, again via the guaranteed admission program. He recalled that after spending more than ten hours in turbulent waters on a ship without any problem, he got motion sickness the moment he boarded a train in Taiwan. After graduating from high school, he studied history at Soochow University in Taipei before returning to his hometown. He initially taught in a middle school before being attracted by the commercial opportunities of G. I. Joe business. Noting that Taiwanese trends were also popular in Dongyin, he opened the first café there in 1979. It was very successful, and two years later he brought the Taiwanese fad of karaoke to Dongyin. Having made quite a bit of money, he decided to expand his business and open a branch on the main island, Nangan. In 1983 he started a karaoke bar there called “Happy Island,” which was an instant success. The bar was quite a shock for Matsu citizens accustomed to the boredom of military rule. Many people—from ordinary citizens to soldiers and high-ranking military officers—became entranced by the seductive musical world of karaoke (S. Lin Reference Lin2013). Within a year, five or six similar bars had opened in Nangan. Military officials soon decided that they could not allow the trend to continue, and they began to target Liu’s business.

In an interview, Liu noted that at first the county government (controlled by the military) increased his taxes tenfold, from NT$2,000 to NT$25,000 per month, making it nearly impossible for his business to survive. Liu then allied himself with other business owners to negotiate with the government and came to an agreement to pay NT$5,000 monthly. Despite this, the karaoke business remained strong, so WZA officials dispatched military police to stand guard in the doorway of the bars. This successfully prevented soldiers from going in, and his business was totally crushed. Liu said:

After his karaoke business collapsed, Liu spent a brief period trying to run his grocery store business again before going to Taiwan to edit Matsu Light. As stated earlier, the journal, under the management of Cao Yuanzheng, had already begun criticizing the situation in Matsu, but because at that time it received financial support from the Matsu government, its commentary was restrained. After Liu joined the magazine, they began to raise money independently, which released them from government control and allowed them to actively promote democracy and free speech. Liu also learned how to write articles, conduct interviews, edit, and raise money, along with other skills involved in running a magazine, from the much more seasoned reporter Cao Yuanzhang, and this laid the foundation that would later help him manage the magazine on his own (J. Liu Reference Liu2006b).

Liu’s experience of the military’s interference in his karaoke business may be dramatic, but such stories were by no means unusual in Matsu. As Part I of this book describes, for a long time ordinary people in Matsu were subject to strict controls imposed by the WZA. In addition to regulated travel between Matsu and Taiwan, and an enforced curfew after 9 pm each night, people’s daily lives were also severely constrained. The military often used the G. I. Joe businesses to pressure ordinary people. Many residents said that if they disobeyed the army, the authorities would threaten them by not allowing soldiers to frequent their businesses. Those who had returned after studying in Taiwan felt this especially keenly:

It is unsurprising that when martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987 but was kept in place in Jinmen and Matsu, long-suppressed popular resentment began to erupt. Young people from Dongyin and Matsu signed petition after petition demanding the removal of the military government (J. Liu Reference Liu1988). In Taiwan, Cao Yuanzhang led Liu Jiaguo and other Matsu youngsters to the streets to fight for democracy. Joining forces with protestors from Jinmen, more than 300 people went to Taipei for the “823 Jinmen-Matsu March.” They gave a full account of their situation to the Legislative Yuan (the primary legislative body in Taiwan), trying to bring an end to the WZA, to gain direct telephone access, to eliminate border exit controls, to improve public transportation, to demand a return of private lands held by the military, to lift the ban on internal travel, to hold county elections, to found a county legislative assembly, and so on. The government did respond in some ways, for example by allowing elections and establishing a county legislature. Liu Jiaguo was elected to be a county councilor (Cao Yuanzhang was later elected as a legislator). In 1991, however, President Lee Teng-hui declared the termination of “the Period of Mobilization for the Suppression of the Communist Rebellion” (dongyuan kanluan shiqi), and on the same day, the Ministry of Defense issued the “Proclamation of Temporary Martial Law in Jinmen-Matsu” (jinma linshi jieyan ling), commencing the second period of martial law in Jinmen and Matsu. Despite intense pressure from military officials, Liu Jiaguo still went to Taiwan along with two other representatives. They organized the “507 Anti-Martial Law” protest with Jinmen representatives, students and the migrants from Matsu and Jinmen living in Taiwan. A sit-in outside the main entrance of the Legislative Yuan building began on May 7 and lasted for eleven nights. The protestors left only when the Ministry of Defense agreed to end the second period of martial law in Jinmen and Matsu. On November 7 of that same year, the Ministry of Defense announced the lifting of martial law in Jinmen and Matsu, and the dismantlement of the WZA. Only then did military control over Jinmen and Matsu truly come to an end, and democracy was implemented in the region.

Matsu Report

After the WZA was abolished in 1992, Cao Yuanzhang felt that his responsibilities from that era had come to an end, and he decided to close down Matsu Light and stand for election. In contrast, Liu Jiaguo, after having participated in protests, was keenly conscious of the important role of the media in holding the government to account and influencing society. He felt that although the WZA had finally been dismantled, Matsu’s major media outlet, Matsu Daily, was still firmly controlled by the county government without a counterbalancing power to monitor its activities. For this reason, he founded Matsu Report, and proceeded with his “post WZA era” social reformation (S. Lin Reference Lin2013). Worried about potential pressure from officials about what to publish, he decided not to solicit funds from the government. Instead, he raised money entirely through contributions from like-minded people. He also discovered that he was not adept at catering to the whims of voters and decided not to stand for election again, throwing himself completely into editing his biweekly broadsheet.

Given all this, Matsu Report held a unique position in Matsu from the very beginning. It was widely read. As one resident amusingly put it:

Moreover, many people said: “I would read every single word of Matsu Report.” Every time a new edition arrived, it would quickly sell out:

Fig. 5.1 A brand new issue of Matsu Report being distributed to passengers waiting at Fu’ao Wharf for a ship to Taiwan

(Photo by Liu Jiaguo 1993)

With so much enthusiasm for it, Matsu Report was published for fourteen years. By the time financial difficulties finally forced it to close its doors in 2006, Liu Jiaguo had already created the vibrant and lively forum of Matsu Online.

The Birth of Matsu Online

The genesis of Matsu Online was connected to Liu’s critical stance toward the government. Around 1997, Matsu’s Bureau of Education created a bulletin board system (BBS), and anyone who wanted to register to use it had to be a professional educator. Others, like Liu, could only use the site as a “guest.” Liu was then banned from using the site after posting comments criticizing the county government. On being silenced by the government in this way, Liu sought out other conduits. Unfamiliar with how websites were operated, he took advantage of the online network “Hahahou” created by Chunghwa Telecom, and established a discussion board called “Free Talk.” By January 1999, Liu had set up a travel website, “Travels Deep in Dongyin” (Dongyin shendu zhilu). Two years later, Matsu Online formally came online on May 20, 2001. Liu recalls: “The first time we reached 500 visitors we held a big celebration!” By November 9, 2004, the total number of hits had reached one million, and by August 2009, that number had soared to five million. During an interview around that time, I asked Liu:

Indeed, at that point Matsu Online was reaching a “plateau” and the number of visitors and hits was only slowly increasing. In January 2012, there were 4,000–8,000 daily visits to the site. In April 2016, there were already 10,000 visitors. Indeed, visitors from more than 100 countries around the world had already visited Matsu Online. Although other websites were subsequently set up, such as Matsu Cloud Platform (Matsu Yuntai Liaowangwang) and Matsu Voices (Matsu zhi Sheng), their popularity could not compete with Matsu Online. For instance, a local wrote the following:

These dialogues (featuring the writer’s elderly parents, her siblings, and her student) show how Liu Jiaguo’s longstanding opposition activism and his experience using print media to affect popular opinion in fact laid the foundation for the widespread acceptance of Matsu Online. Below I will examine the website layout, management, and participation by netizens to explore how Matsu Online outpaced print media in the digital age and gradually grew from a website devoted to political machinations into a part of daily life in Matsu.

Digital Matsu

The layout of Matsu Online is based on a commercially available program for online forums. It has been successively adjusted many times over the years, and it continues to change today. The interface and online content discussed here comes mainly from data collected over two years from November 2010 to October 2012, supplemented with my field research in the islands. This was also the period of peak usage for Matsu Online—with limited use of smartphone and application software (such as Facebook) in the islands at the time, the website’s significance was epochal. The structure of the site’s main page can be divided into the center, top, two sides, and four lower sections (Fig. 5.2). Each block has its own features and orientation to satisfy netizens’ demand for variety. Through close analysis, we can see how the people of Matsu also live together in an online community.

Fig. 5.2 The main page of Matsu Online

The Central Section

The central section of Matsu Online is the liveliest, with daily updates of “Matsu News,” the community discussion forum “Free Talk,” and stories about life on Matsu in “Life & Culture” and “Video & Image,” and so on. These sections are the most popular on the website. The webmaster and associate webmasters search the major Taiwanese newspapers for news about Matsu and publish it in the “Matsu News” section. These daily updates not only attract netizens to consistently check the site for the newest information, they also make the website seem current and relevant. By reading Matsu Online, people can quickly learn about the latest trends in Matsu and become aware of the latest news about the area.

Unlike “Matsu News,” the information in “Free Talk” comes from posts made by netizens themselves. The content on “Free Talk” is multifarious and enticing, and can be largely divided into two categories: politics and local life. Most of the political topics are complaints against local government agencies, such as satirically expressed criticism that government responses are well behind the times: “Matsu government efficiency is terrific! Really terrific!” (CTC 2011). Local topics might include something like: “What happened to the promises of the Taiwan Power Company?” (Shiyuan Reference Shiyuan2011). Netizens post about all sorts of issues in their daily lives, and air their indignation, while others can “respond” and express their own opinions.

Indeed, “Free Talk” itself, as the webmaster emphasized, is designed to attract the participation of netizens; its entries are organized sequentially by what has received the latest comment, with the newest placed at the top of the list. However, if a topic receives a lot of commentary, it leaps to the top as an important entry. For example, when netizens like a particular article, they can use the “clap” function to express their support. When an article has received more than fifteen “claps,” the website software automatically adds a thumbs-up icon () in front of that article’s title, indicating that it has received a lot of attention. At the same time, whenever a appears, the article gets bumped up to the top of the “Free Talk” section. In this way, “Free Talk” continually stimulates reader participation.

Moving down the page, one comes to the “Life & Culture” section, which is oriented more toward interesting stories and self-expression. Here, netizens post about all kinds of events in their lives, such as “The paths I’ve taken—for my schoolmates who graduated around ’75” (Mojieke Reference Mojieke2011). The webmaster sometimes adds articles about the natural landscape of Matsu. For example, he posted a poem written by a local called “Autumn glimpsed from the pathways of Ox Horn, Nangan, Matsu” (admin 2011a), and posted an article entitled “A red-throated loon, which hasn’t been seen here or in Taiwan for 40 years, has been spotted in Dongyin” (admin 2011c). This section, by mixing local information with landscape and culture, avoids being presented as diary entries or as formal “cultural” representation.

Next is the “Video & Image” section, where netizens can enjoy images and accounts of various events. Most of them are about the life-cycle rituals of Matsu people, such as the “long-awaited wedding photos of Sun Xiaohao and Wang Jingyi” (admin 2011b), which gives people who did not attend the wedding a chance to see the ceremony. Similarly, this section is also for people to mourn the dead. In the post “My father Cao Dianzhang” (Ruiyun Reference Ruiyun2011), Cao Ruiyun describes how much she misses her late father, and at the end includes an obituary. Below, Chen Qingzhi, Yang Suisheng, Xiaoxiao Cao, and Lanlang Qingtian, among others, all left comments. In addition, teachers also post photos and videos from school events. For example, in December 2010, Banli Elementary held quite a few activities, and added many photos to this section for everyone to enjoy.² Parents can use this online venue to see their children’s participation; thus, it functions as a “virtual contact book” for parents and the school. Overall, these photos and videos allow netizens to participate in each other’s life rituals and important events in the virtual world. It connects people in Matsu to those who moved to Taiwan, and them to the wider world, thus forming a new virtual community.

Continuing down the page are the sections “Activity Info” and “Matsu Board.” Here we see a unique aspect of Matsu Online. Aside from the ordinary netizens, businesses, and local community organizations posting in these sections, all levels of government agencies, the army, and the media, also registered here to promulgate government policy and answer citizens’ questions. It is truly astonishing how many government agencies have registered on Matsu Online. From the largest county-level “Lianjiang County Government” to subordinate units, and even the national court and the military (registered under “General Government Section Heads”)— all have registered accounts (Fig. 5.3). It has become a kind of bulletin board for all levels of government organizations. Even Matsu Daily, the media outlet of the Lianjiang County government, has an account on Matsu Online, registered on August 22, 2005, and makes online corrections to mistakes that have appeared in print. Undoubtedly, Matsu Online has become embedded in the daily life of Matsu and is indispensable to understanding Matsu society in this period.

Fig. 5.3 All levels of government sections in Matsu have their own accounts on Matsu Online

Lastly, the “Business Info” section collects different merchants selling all kinds of products. Many online shopping sites charge extra shipping fees to mail goods to Matsu, so Matsu Online offers a platform for shoppers to find one another in order to split the fees. If they buy in bulk, they may also receive discounts. Matsu Online has thereby become a helper for people living in Matsu.

The Online Self

Matsu Online is a Web 2.0 site, so it can be both read and added to by visitors to the site. Everyone can be an online author, adding information or opinions at will. The website’s copyright statement specifies that information is published both by website personnel and by online community participants. Apart from expressing their personal opinions about Matsu, netizens also post all sorts of articles related to it. On a website of this kind, users play an important role: information is provided by everyone, and this diverse community of people is itself a source of what appears on the site.

During this process, however, website managers do play the role of arbiters. In the event that something inappropriate is posted, the site offers a “Report” button, with which readers can explain to the webmaster why an item should be reviewed. If posted material involves “a personal attack or insult, or spreads rumors, it will be deleted,” the webmaster said. If the content continues to be posted, the site deals with it by blocking the originating IP address. However, the most common way for people to communicate with the webmaster is to make a phone call to request a deletion of a post that may be harmful or tendentious. For example, when I was in Matsu doing fieldwork, someone added pictures from a school reunion to the “Activity Info” section. A woman called the webmaster to ask him to remove a photo of herself with a male classmate whose arm was around her shoulder. She said she worried that the photo might cause troubles for her marriage were it not to be removed. The webmaster immediately deleted the photo. Clearly, the fact that it is responsive to the needs of the online community is one reason that Matsu Online has established itself firmly as a part of Matsu life. A successful virtual community is based on “its ability to manage different subjects, create its own style and norms, and continue to attract active participants” (Zhai Reference Zhai2000: 236).

Anyone can read the information on Matsu Online, but content can be posted only by those who have registered as users with the website. There are five levels of registered user: new, beginner (more than 20 postings), mid-level (more than 100 postings), senior (more than 250 postings), and expert (more than 400 postings). Above, I mentioned the “clap” and “recommend” functions on Matsu Online. Once a post receives more than fifteen claps, it is marked with a , which indicates that it has elicited significant discussion. This icon means that the post has garnered a certain number of readers, and that the discussion has been relatively active. The number of claps received results in points for the user, which in turn contributes to the ascent from a “beginner” to “mid-level” user, and from a “senior” to an “expert” user. For every clap, a member receives one point. When a post or picture reaches a certain number of points, the user is promoted as follows: 30 points to make beginner user; 90 points to become a mid-level user; 180 points to become a senior user; and 360 points to become an expert user (admin 2005). It is obvious that the posts of expert users are given the highest profile. One might wonder whether this way of organizing users generates a kind of “hierarchy” between different users. However, it is important to point out that this ranking is based on the efforts of individual users and the support of netizens, which is quite different from traditional place-based or kinship systems.

Evidently, these encouragement mechanisms and the different levels of user are mainly designed to encourage interactions between netizens and to increase traffic on the site, but they can also efficiently gauge the attitudes of users. The response of any given netizen alone may not be taken seriously, but in the online world, netizens’ responses can quickly gather power. These opinions may diverge from the judgments of the political leaders, but grassroots efforts sometimes do influence final outcomes. Already in 2007, during my early fieldwork, a local government official put it this way:

In the real world, the status of individuals in Matsu is well defined, and their behavior is constrained by social custom and expectations, especially in the relatively restrictive environment of island life. On Matsu Online, one does not need to use a real name, and all that is needed to open an account is an email address. When their identity is blurred, people can not only freely exhibit themselves in ways they may not be able to in their ordinary lives (Turkle Reference Turkle1997 [1995]), but also participate publicly while remaining concealed. The demarcation between public and private becomes less and less clear, and traditional values and norms exert less of a hold over people. With social controls weakened, netizens have more courage to express their hidden, more extreme, or more emotional selves. This is shown in the way in which netizens choose their online names. Some examples of names include “Casting off my millstone,” “Little Li’s mom…and her knife,” and even “Making my millions as a legislator,” which satirizes, ridicules, and criticizes the corruption of government officials.

Not having to reveal their real names offers netizens a new space in which to express themselves. The language on Matsu Online often includes acerbic or surrealistically humorous expressions invented by netizens, through which they can more fully articulate their opinions. They openly challenge standards of speech and break the traditional authority of hegemonic discourse. Matsu Online allows people to engage in “self-imagining as an everyday social project” (Appadurai Reference Appadurai1996: 4).

Matsu Online in Local Society

The most dynamic conversations on Matsu Online are about political issues. Matsu Daily was founded by the military government against the backdrop of Matsu as a military frontline, and had long been subject to military control. After the lifting of martial law, the newspaper was transferred to the county government, and its head is now appointed by the county commissioner. Given this lack of neutrality, locals often ridicule it as the “Doormat-su Daily” (mapi bao). When Matsu Online started, it offered a platform to challenge this media-governmental entity. Particularly on “Free Talk,” netizens express trenchant criticism of governmental policies, and keep an eye on all manner of governmental actions. Matsu Online became a social space, with connotations of Habermas’s (Reference Habermas1989[1962]) “public sphere.”

One minor controversy, involving a calendar that was initiated on “Free Talk,” demonstrates how online critiques can influence the government. In 2010 the county government celebrated the centennial of the ROC and designed a special calendar for 2011. They chose pictures that were not militarily dogmatic, but very local in flavor, mainly scenes of Matsu’s war heritage, ecology, and culture from different angles. The 365 photos were intended to provide an overview of a rich and varied Matsu. After 7,500 copies of the centennial calendar were printed and sent to homes, a Matsu Online user posted a piece called “Would you dare hang this calendar on your wall?”

The following day, netizen “Changle” responded: “Officials should be more careful about showing how little concern they have for the law, or all their good policies will end in failure.” Adding fuel to the fire, a netizen added: “Why hasn’t the appropriate authority in the Lianjiang government showed up to explain or apologize? … Obviously the government’s crisis response needs work.” Three days later, the county commissioner himself held a meeting to assuage public anger and levied a fine of NT$100,000 against the bureau that had published the calendar.

Governmental organizations are not the sole target; civic organizations can also come under fire. An election for the committee of an important Matsu temple, the Tianhou Temple, is a case in point. On December 12, netizen Zhongge (Reference Zhongge2010) wrote a post pointing out many problems with the election. It rapidly attracted attention and soon received a “recommended” icon (Fig. 5.4).

Fig. 5.4 A netizen challenges the Tianhou Temple election

Another netizen called Mashan then claimed that the election was rife with issues, such as the facts that some voters had not showed up to cast votes, and that Tianhou Temple workers had taken the ballots to their homes. Other members of the temple did not know they were supposed to vote, yet ballots were cast for them. At the end of his post, he called for the relevant authorities to come forward and explain the situation. Another user, Hannibal B., further cast aspersions on Tianhou Temple by pointing to Taiwan’s temples and the overall negative atmosphere that surrounded them. The suggestion was that many temples around Taiwan were inappropriately involved with political power and local factions. He expressed his hope that the temples around Matsu would not be similarly polluted but would instead serve as local spiritual centers. However, on December 13, the user “Little Li’s mom…and her knife” raised even more issues, including the fact that the Temple committee was giving gifts of clothing, engaging in public relations activities, “exploiting the Goddess to make money,” and so on. He or she felt the committee elections were deeply flawed and demanded that the elected members go before the Tianhou Goddess and cast divinatory blocks in order to show that they were truly chosen by the deities.

On December 14, 2010 Liangshanding wrote a post titled “Were the Mazu Temple Committee Elections in Mangang Suitable, Fair, and Legal?” in which he vehemently condemned the election. After this string of online criticisms, on December 16 the temple committee chair finally posted an announcement of his resignation from the Tianhou Temple committee (Zeng Reference Zeng2010). This kind of event may seem familiar to us now, but it had never happened before in Matsu, which had long been governed by the army. Now netizens who are strangers in their ordinary lives can join together to compel a responsible party to make amends. The above events took only five short days. The internet-enabled rapidity with which opinions are collected and disseminated on Matsu Online has transformed Matsu society at large.

Online Intimacy and Place Identity

Even more surprisingly, one of the first anonymous netizens (“Eric”) to criticize the temple committee posted again a month later, and revealed his real name, Feng Quanzhong, apologizing to the former committee head, and admitting his own mistakes:

I asked Feng why he had done this. He said that he had come to feel that this type of criticism was “too direct,” and that his apology “benefited the community” (at that time, Feng was the secretary of the Community Association of Matsu). He continued in an ironic tone:

Feng’s public apology reveals that his online behavior was discovered and threatened by the traditional local power; in Matsu the distance between the physical and virtual worlds seems to have been difficult to maintain.³ But why did it happen? For example, why did Feng give his own phone number on the “Business Info” section of the website? This is rarely seen on other mainstream websites. On most online auction sites, buyers and sellers bid online, and only after the transaction do they exchange their personal information. This offers some safeguards when two strangers do business. However, in Matsu it is common for people to give their own phone numbers in their postings on Matsu Online: often, at the bottom of many ads, users’ personal contact information appears, making their identities at least partially public before any deal has been made (Fig. 5.5).

Fig. 5.5 A seller provides a phone number in an ad on Matsu Online

Locals consider this completely normal and have no problem with it. When I asked about it, they looked puzzled and responded: “Anyone who uses Matsu Online must have some connection to Matsu!” Put another way, they trust that the users of Matsu Online are part of the island community in some way; giving out their contact information is a way of showing their intimacy with each other (Herzfeld Reference Herzfeld1996). This practice, tinted as it is with public intimacy, is premised on the users’ imagination of the offline Matsu community at large and is important to the formation of place identity.

Matsu, Taiwan, and China Simultaneously

The development of Matsu Online has expanded the island’s reach by forging instantaneous links to other places and offering the island society a new basis for its social actions. Under the WZA, the government tried its hardest to bring each island individually into the war effort, rather than uniting them. “One island, one life” was the island imaginary of the military. After the WZA was dismantled, Matsu began to develop more links to the outside world. The appearance of Matsu Online further disrupted the isolation of each island and interconnected Matsu, Taiwan, and China. The up-to-the-minute reports on the 2008 Shanlong fire shows how Matsu Online was able to instantaneously link Matsu, Taiwan, and China.

At 8:40 pm on January 20, 2008, a fire erupted in Shanlong, Nangan. The associate webmaster of Matsu Online, who was in Taiwan at the time, quickly posted the news at 8:50 pm. The information was updated every half-hour until the fire was finally controlled twelve hours later. During that time, netizens in Taiwan continually asked for more information about the fire: “Can you tell us what’s going on with the fire? Please report” (Zhonghe Ahfang Reference Afang2008). The webmaster then discovered that important officials, such as the Lianjiang county commissioner and associate commissioner, were in China on official business, and he criticized them for leaving Matsu to fend for itself as they once again toadied to Chinese officials (admin 2008). A stream of criticism forced the officials to return to Matsu the following day.

Moreover, after these events, netizens offered different types of information on Matsu Online, hoping to build a realistic picture of the circumstances. For example, someone posted a picture of a building destroyed by the fire, showing the utter devastation (Biancheng Huashi Reference Huashi2008), while another user wrote to describe what he himself had witnessed as the fire raged (Aide 2008). As a small archipelago on Taiwan’s northern most border with a tiny population, Matsu is rarely reported on by the Taiwanese media. When the fire started, netizens posted information on Matsu Online as rapidly as reports from Satellite News Gathering, thus helping the people of Matsu build a picture of what was happening at any given moment. If an imagined community is marked by its simultaneity (Anderson Reference Anderson1991 [1983]: 24; Taylor Reference Taylor2004: 157), then the community of Matsu today has stretched across Taiwan and China, and has been reconfigured in the online world.

Social Movement On-and-Offline

It is not only online that netizens come together to discuss; they also initiate and participate in concrete actions in the real world. The 2011 “823 March” that took place on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office is a case in point.

Land issues in Matsu have long been a vexing problem. As stateless islands till the mid-twentieth century, land regulation of Matsu relied mostly on personal agreements. The military government at the beginning did not establish any land administration bureau to handle land registration.⁴ The army could simply commandeer local land to build barracks and construct fortifications without gaining the consent of the local people.⁵ Some locals were merely offered a verbal agreement: “The land will revert to you after counteractions against the mainland are over.”⁶ Only in 1972 did the Lianjiang County government establish a civil administrative bureau to deal with land affairs, and finally issued the first land deeds. Still, at that time, the bureau only registered land within villages, which accounted for a mere tenth of the territory in Matsu. After the military rule, the government finally established a land management bureau in 1993, which surveyed all of the land and registered it. Unfortunately, these surveys were riddled with inaccuracies, and caused much public anger. Moreover, under the law, anyone who wished to register a piece of land needed to produce proof of “occupancy” from before the first land deeds of 1972. This so-called occupancy had to involve “cultivation of the land.” Early usage of land in Matsu, however, was not always connected to cultivation, but for example could be a family “firewood patch” (F. tshia liang), where plants were allowed to grow naturally and were then cut and gathered whenever fuel was needed. Officials frequently considered such plots of land to be “uncultivated,” and therefore did not allow their return to the Matsu people. As for the land on which Matsu locals dried small shrimp in the sun, officials were even more convinced that such places “were areas without any effort at cultivation,” and so were not to be returned either. These “ownerless” areas of land finally became “state-owned,” and were thereby legally expropriated by the state. These land issues are a problem handed down from the period of military rule that have been frustratingly difficult to resolve.

Those people who did not obtain their land from the state frequently expressed outrage online over the immoral seizures of land by the government, eliciting many responses (Lin and Wang Reference Lin and Wang2012: 127–33). Since the issue represents a continuing source of communal pain for Matsu, in recent years it has become an important issue which every candidate for county commissioner’s position must address. For example, in 2006, after candidate Wu Shizi (Reference Wu2006) lost the election for county commissioner, he published a statement to remind the government that “Resolving the land problem depends solely upon whether government leaders ‘really care.’” In 2009, the independent candidate for county commissioner, Chen Caineng, also focused on how to resolve the land seizure problem.

On April 22, 2011, netizen Wang Changming (Reference Wang2011a) put up a public post on Matsu Online with the title: “On August 23, we will take to the streets of Taiwan to demand the return of the rights and interests of the Matsu people.” In the piece, he gives an impassioned description of the land problem in Matsu and recalls the 1987 protest for freedom by the Matsu people in Taiwan, calling for locals to once again rise up and demand their rights. The post not only sparked a chain of discussion on Matsu Online, but it also gave rise to the 823 March for land reform on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei (Fig. 5.6).

Fig. 5.6 Matsu people at the 823 March with the building of KMT Central Party Department in the background

(Photo by Wang Chun-Hui)

Wang Changming is the village head of Banli, Beigan. He had lived through the oppressive treatment of military officials during the WZA era. When martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987, but the government still maintained military control over Jinmen and Matsu, Wang, who lived in Taiwan at the time, participated in the first protest march there on August 23rd of that year. He moved back to Matsu in 1998 and was elected village head in 2006. He was unstinting in his efforts to redress the problems of land in Matsu. Because of their common interest in the issue of land seizures, Wang Changming and Chen Caineng gradually came into closer contact with each other. When ordinary people’s land appeals were ignored or dismissed by the government, they were increasingly attracted to political outsiders for assistance. On September 7, 2010, when Chen appeared before the county legislative assembly, Wang also came to participate. On that day, the “Return Our Ancestral Lands Association” was established, and Wang was put forward as the head of the association. It agreed upon a deadline of March 1, 2011. If the government did not produce legislation by that date, the association would launch recall petitions against the county commissioner and the entire legislative council.

Matsu Online thus became a platform through which Wang could communicate with citizens and confront the land issue. He posted continuous updates about the situation and emphasized the importance of the return of Matsu land. After 2010, he commenced even more active efforts. He publicly posted a petition and forms online and frequently announced new signatures and information, thereby turning Matsu Online into a center for news about the land issue. By October 4, the petition had garnered 687 signatures (C. Chen Reference Chen2010).⁷

As a result of the online activity and the insistence of leaders, a protest march gradually took shape. A degree of planning and coordination were needed in order to concentrate forces effectively. Holding the protest on August 23 was a clever decision. The 823 bombardment of Jinmen had heightened tensions between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and the date had special historical significance. Aside from the date, the marchers also needed a new slogan and something eye-catching to emphasize the idea behind the protest and attract more participants. Wang (Reference Wang2011b) posted twenty-some slogans online and asked people to choose between them. Chen (Reference Chen2011a) recommended the idea of “the power of a single cloth!” This post was the most hotly discussed of the group, and it attracted a total of 6,641 readers by August 14, 2011. Chen recommended that every person with a specific land complaint should write down the lot number, location, and civil defense number on an 8 x 23 cm piece of cloth. These cloths would then be sewn together into a huge flag and carried in the procession. The purpose was to recall the 823 March and to symbolize the land they had lost. It also aimed to unite the people together to rally for justice. Although the idea of the flag was not ultimately implemented because of practical difficulties, it undoubtedly absorbed and concentrated the fury of the netizens.

This protest movement is an important case of an event being fomented and organized online, and then implemented in the real world. Matsu Online played an important role throughout: it allowed people from across the world to learn about what was happening, and it offered a conduit for the anger of those who were plagued by land problems. It also exposed the seizures by the state, the inflexibility of bureaucrats, and the impotence of politicians. When the online community’s discontent reached a certain level, its force was redirected towards real-world action. On the day of the march, demonstrators often mentioned Matsu Online, and when participants met each other, they even introduced themselves by their online comments. The internet gathered people, produced ideas, and generated concrete action in the real world.

Discovering Matsu

The discussion above clearly demonstrates that Matsu today is neither the transient fishing island of yore, nor the military warzone frontline. The variety of mediating forms—words, photos, music, films—offered by Matsu Online also shows the different angles from which the people of Matsu write, imagine, and discover a new Matsu.

The bottom right of Matsu Online’s main page contains a listing of blogs by local writers and artists, exploring Matsu’s language, culture, and natural landscape. They show us how “today’s Matsu” has been newly understood. For example, there is a thread for schoolteachers’ discussions of traditional Matsu religion and folk culture. There is also a “Blog of a Cool Principal” in which the “cool principal,” Wang Jianhua, focuses on describing Matsu’s natural world. Along the left-hand side of his blog are options such as “Flapping Feathers,” “Summertime Feathers,” and “Ecology Notes.” By clicking on one of the links, one is directed towards his careful reflections on the island’s ecology. “Flapping Feathers” provides his observations of birds; for example, in “Small Pool, Unbridled Life-force,” he wrote:

He continues by telling netizens how they can enjoy these Matsu birds:

In “Ecology Notes,” he posts about creatures other than birds. For example, the article “Let our children learn to do more—going clamming” talks about his experience taking his children to dig up clams. “If You Don’t Do It Now, You’ll Have to Wait Until Next Year!” (J. Wang Reference Wang2011) offers a picture of Fuji cherries and tells people where they can find and enjoy them. One can also observe how he focuses on helping people to “discover Matsu” and to experience the unique aspects of the islands.

Matsu Online also has a blog, written by Cao Yifeng, that younger people enjoy called “Ascending Feng’s Valley.” Cao is part of a younger generation; and his way of expressing himself in his blog is to post mainly photographs, with text serving an auxiliary role. His photos all have to do with daily life, as witnessed by the post containing the comment “It’s bass season and you can see it from every household” (Y. Cao Reference Cao2011), followed by a long succession of photographs about hanging the dried fish. Photographs cannot transmit the same quantity and depth of information as words, but recording daily life and one’s experiences in photos can often bring a sense of immediacy.

In short, both schoolteachers and cultural workers actively apply different kinds of media on Matsu Online in order to share what they know about the history, culture, and natural ecology of this place. In doing so, they hope to bring new perspectives of Matsu to the netizens.

Conclusion: A Place with its Own Value

This chapter has shown how Matsu Online has achieved a level of unprecedented influence in these islands. Its popularity can be explicated first from its geographic condition. Previous scholarship shows us that whether a community website can have a significant impact on a place or not is closely related to its situation in that given locality. Community websites often thrive in newly developed suburbs in which immigrants have just arrived and modern technologies are more readily accepted (Hampton and Wellman Reference Hampton and Wellman2003; Postill Reference Postill2011). The Matsu archipelago is located on the furthest northern border of the ROC, and its inherently dispersive mountainous island topology had traditionally made communication for people scattered across Matsu difficult, both between individual islands and between the islands and the outside world. The linkages provided by the World Wide Web appear to be all the more important in this context. Second, with its particular historical background as a military zone, Matsu’s main news medium, Matsu Daily, has long been controlled by the government, though local dissidents had established self-founded journals such as Matsu Light and Matsu Report for several years and had gathered considerable energy. This is why the internet, when it came to the islands at the end of the twentieth century, successfully collected the readers of print media, and used its new technology, which can combine words, music, and images, in more powerful ways to attract a bigger readership. Matsu Online thus built extraordinary momentum and influence.

Overall, Matsu Online changed the way in which the islanders access information, providing an entirely new platform for the dissemination of news. In the age before smart phone-based communication software became popular, it was the most important media technology of the time, which changed how people communicated with each other and the social rhythm of the entire archipelago. In contemporary Matsu, people live in both the physical and the virtual worlds; local residents and netizens create the reality of Matsu together.

Nevertheless, for a small archipelago, the importance of Matsu Online perhaps has even more to do with the fact that it allows people to transcend the self and traditional social relationships. The rise of Matsu Online gave any individual on Matsu a new virtual life—that is, a blank page to write on. It allowed individuals to hide behind an account number and express their opinions freely. In this virtual world, netizens can be reborn as beginners and grow up into experts, gradually gathering influence and affecting the real world. Although these new selves do not entirely throw off traditional social roles, they have already superseded the geographical borders of the islands and have become interconnected to form a new Taiwan-Matsu-China existence. They stretch across the Taiwan Strait, and are able to generate social movements that demand greater rights for the Matsu people.

Taking one step further, Matsu Online has not only created a new kind of community, but also a different sense of place: in this instantaneously linked online world, Matsu is no longer the periphery, but the center. Matsu Online, therefore, offers us an excellent example to understand how new media have created a different imaginary, that is, “a new place” (Boellstorff Reference Boellstorff2008; Miller and Horst Reference Miller, Horst, Horst and Miller2012). If in Imagined Communities, Anderson (Reference Anderson1991 [1983]) told us how print capitalism could change local communities into homogeneous and empty social units, then Matsu Online demonstrates the opposite: that the internet can turn a locality into a new homeland of the mind towards which the diasporic people feel a sense of belonging and to which they anchor their emotions. This is likely not only unique to Matsu, but is rather a phenomenon that can be seen in other online emigrant communities (Basu Reference Basu2007; Mitra Reference Mitra and Jones1997). In other words, internet technology has become an important means of producing place. Matsu people around the world can depict and imagine “the new Matsu” online, creating intimate ties with it that did not previously exist. Via online media, Matsu today has already transformed itself from a peripheral archipelago and a Cold War “anticommunist frontline” into a place with its own value and worth.

The previous chapter gives a comprehensive examination of Matsu Online, and demonstrates the influence that the internet has had on local society. This chapter focuses on individuals and the ways in which they have undergone transformations in the online world. Beginning on September 14, 2005, a husband-and-wife team began to publish a series of posts on Matsu Online. The images were drawn by Chen Tianshun, a Matsu islander who had emigrated to Taiwan, and the text was written by his Taiwanese wife Xia Shuhua, who had never been a resident of Matsu. Given the enthusiastic response of netizens, the duo continued their collaboration for three years, culminating in the book The Wartime Childhood of Leimengdi (Fig. 6.1, hereafter Leimengdi), published in 2009. “Leimeng” means “hooligan” in the Matsu dialect, and the expression “leimengdi” is often used as a general term for boys. The book, narrated in the first-person by Leimengdi, thus represents both Chen Tianshun’s experiences as well as those of most Matsu children. It describes in great detail the ecology of the Matsu Islands and people’s lives during the period of military rule. The unique products of the island, the eastern Fujian culture, and the difficulties of living while governed by the military state all come alive in Chen’s vivid illustrations and Xia’s nostalgic storytelling which together constitute his memories of Matsu under military rule. Much beloved, it was selected as a “Book of Matsu” (Matsu zhi shu) in 2010.

Fig. 6.1 The cover of The Wartime Childhood of Leimengdi

This chapter will first examine the writing of Leimengdi, analyzing how Chen Tianshun’s experiences growing up in Matsu contain two kinds of self-consciousness, namely an island sociocultural self and a militarily oppressed self. Then I will discuss how online writing became for him a process of subjectification (Moore Reference Moore2011:80), allowing Chen to transcend these two kinds of self and become a new imagining subject brimming with morals, emotions, and hopes for the future. New media technology played a vital role in this process (Dijck 2007), since its inherent connectivity and immediacy can evoke, respond, and animate intersubjectively, linking netizens in different spatio-temporal locations. In this process, the borderlines between the inner and the outer, the individual and the social are transgressed; new subjects, social relations, and, importantly, a collective wartime memory thus take shape.

Leimengdi in Matsu Online

On the old main page of Matsu Online, one could find a link to “Xia Shuhua-Leimengdi Stories” on the right side under “Recommendations” (Fig. 6.2). Clicking it gave access to posts beginning in 2005 and continuing up to the present day. Each of the posts received a large number of hits when it first appeared, and they continued to be frequently visited. When the web page was redone in 2016, this section was merged with the “Star Writers” (dakuai) section, under the name of Xia Shuhua. Nevertheless, it has remained one of the most popular series on the website. What prompted this couple to write the posts? How did they work together, and what did they want to express?

Fig. 6.2 Xia Shuhua-Leimengdi stories on Matsu Online

The Denial of Matsu

Let me begin with the creation of Leimengdi. I first met Chen Tianshun at the invitation of a Matsu commissioner, Yang Suisheng. Chen was already quite famous in Matsu because of the success of Leimengdi. The commissioner was interested in promoting a recent archeological discovery on Liang Island, and hoped he would put out a series of books about the lives of the people on Liang Island in the style of Leimengdi.¹ Later, as I was writing about the online Matsu “land reclamation” movement (Lin and Wang Reference Lin and Wang2012), I found him very keen on writing blog posts and drawing pictures criticizing the government’s occupation of the Matsu people’s land during the military period. When I contacted him to express my interest in researching Leimengdi, with the hope that I would be able to interview him and his wife, he invited me to his home.

In my interview with Chen, I asked why his family had come to Taiwan. He told me that the Matsu fishing economy had declined, and his father could no longer support their family by fishing in their village of Qiaozi, Beigan. His elder brother and sister were sent to Taiwan as child laborers, and were followed there by their father, who made a living selling Fuzhou noodles. When Chen graduated from middle school, he moved with his mother to Taiwan, and with that, the whole family had left Matsu behind. Chen then studied fine arts, and after graduation worked as a cartoonist for several animation companies. He lived in Taiwan for twenty-seven years without returning once to Matsu. I asked him if he hadn’t missed it, and he frowned and said:

This snippet of conversation shows that when he moved to Taiwan, Chen Tianshun’s memories of Matsu under military rule were very negative. He did not return for nearly three decades and only rarely had contact with others from Matsu. He married a Taiwanese wife and lived with his family in Taipei, unwilling to face that part of Matsu’s past.

Nevertheless, during this time, he would occasionally post a few cartoons on Matsu Online, criticizing the state for fooling the people, occupying their land, and coming up with all manner of excuses to justify not handing the land back to its rightful owners. The longstanding anger he holds against the government is still evident (Fig. 6.3) (T. Chen Reference Chen2008).

Fig. 6.3 “Return our land” cartoon

I asked Chen why he started drawing the Leimengdi series. His wife Shuhua, sitting beside him, answered by saying that when she joined her husband as he went home to negotiate the land dispute with the government, she was very moved to see his hometown for the first time. She wrote about her feelings in an essay entitled “Total Lunar Eclipse” (yue quan shi) (Xia Reference Xia2005a), and posted it in the “Life & Culture” section of Matsu Online. In the piece, she describes how after she visited Matsu, her husband’s childhood memories turned into her own longing. The first couple of pieces were all text, with a few photos she had taken appended to the end. To her surprise, the click rate was extremely high. She then wrote three or four more essays, and each essay broke the Matsu Online record for number of views. Encouraged, she continued to write.

The enthusiastic response of netizens not only gave Xia Shuhua the impetus to continue the series, it also inspired her cartoonist husband to begin illustrating her work. On October 27, 2005, he published the first drawing in the Leimengdi series called “Faraway Childhood” (yuanfang de tongnian) (Xia Reference Xia2005d). When I asked him why he decided to do it, he told me:

This husband-and-wife web creation continued for three years.

Since Leimengdi is built around Chen Tianshun’s recollections of growing up in Matsu, I will begin with his descriptions of local customs and his warzone experiences to analyze the implicit dual self in the text.

The Island Sociocultural Self

Leimengdi offers a rich portrait of Matsu’s sociocultural context during Chen Tianshu’s childhood. Below, I discuss how the author imagines himself from the perspectives of land, family, social lives, and individual fantasy.

Land

Opening the book, what immediately leaps to the eye is the carefully drawn Qiaozi, where the main character Leimengdi grows up (Fig. 6.4). The village is on the Matsu island of Beigan, and many of the villagers there rely on fishing for their livelihood. Some of their catch is sold to Tangqi, the largest hamlet in Beigan. Chen Tianshun meticulously depicts the two inlets of Qiaozi, and as Leimengdi’s father says: “They were like two precious pockets given to us by God, from which an inexhaustible supply could be drawn” (Xia and Chen Reference Xia and Tianshun2009: 96). In this drawing of Qiaozi, Chen recreates the houses of the 1960s with incredibly accuracy (today, more than half of them have disappeared or fallen into disrepair). This precision undoubtedly shows that his youth was the most important period in his life.

Fig. 6.4 Qiaozi, Beigan (circa 1960)

Family and Social Life

Below the drawing, Xia provides a wonderful description of how Leimengdi’s family managed to support eight people, two pigs, twenty to thirty ducks, and a dozen chickens. The father left each morning at 5 am to fish in the ocean, while the mother was constantly on the move, farming the slopes of the mountain, collecting seafood at low tide, and hawking goods to soldiers. Every child in the household had a job to do: the older children did the heaviest work with Leimengdi as a helper, while his younger sister watched the youngest girl. Every member of the household took part in its maintenance (Fig. 6.5).

Fig. 6.5 Leimengdi’s siblings

During Leimengdi’s childhood, the ocean around the Matsu Islands still teamed with small shrimp. Processing shrimp was a complex process that required the participation of the whole family. When the fishing boats returned, the shrimp was first sorted on the beach, then taken back to each family’s fishing hut to be boiled, dried, and laid out on bamboo mats to continue to dry in the sun (Fig. 6.6), all before it could be sold.

Fig. 6.6 Processing shrimp required the participation of the whole family

Chen also made extremely detailed depictions of village ceremonies and events such as weddings. In the small communities on Matsu, when a wedding was to be held, the family would borrow tables and chairs from anyone they could. A few days before the wedding banquet, all the able-bodied men in the family would carry a long bamboo pole through the village, tying chairs onto it as they walked the lanes, which became a fascinating part of the backdrop of the village (Fig. 6.7). The islands carried on the customs of eastern Fujian, where the tradition was that wedding celebrations lasted three days and three nights, with a separate “men’s party,” “women’s party,” and “children’s party.” The “children’s party” would be held three days before the wedding, and before the banquet began children would beat a gong and shout as loudly as possible, “The gong’s ringing, come and drink!” When they heard the sound of the gong, the other children would happily run over to join the fun (Fig. 6.8).

Fig. 6.7 Chairs needed for a wedding banquet

Fig. 6.8 A children’s party

The annual Lantern Festival celebration (pe mang) was an even happier occasion for everyone, young and old (Fig. 6.9). Adults would carry sedan chairs and the children would beat gongs as they circled the village. Children liked to hear the adults tell the story of Deity Yang fighting demons on the high seas (Fig. 6.10).

Fig. 6.9 Lantern Festival night in Matsu

Fig. 6.10 Deity Yang taming demons on the sea

Personal Fantasy

As he grew up, Leimengdi often played by the seaside and enjoyed the beauty of the ocean (Fig. 6.11). The section of beach that led to his grandfather’s house left a particularly indelible memory. As he walked along the sand, the village seemed to rise like a mirage of a castle, while behind him was fine white sand and the ever-changing ocean. In his mind, the scene resembled a girl curled up on the beach, and that image has remained etched deeply in Chen Tianshun’s memory.

Fig. 6.11 Leimengdi’s personal world

The exquisite scenery of Matsu was imprinted on his mind through his childhood games, as was the food that the women of Matsu made: noodle soup with fresh seafood and fish balls, jellyfish strips, and golden crab. These flavors became an unforgettable part of Leimengdi’s memories. However, all of these wonderful memories came to be overshadowed by the military rule.

The Militarily Oppressed Self

Leimengdi is the first book to describe the physical and psychological harm that military rule wreaked on the islanders. The narratives and illustrations portray violent scenes with great vividness. The terror, oppression, and trauma of the time are evoked through the visceral content, paralleling the sociocultural context of Matsu described earlier.

Terror

Given the haste with which Chiang Kai-shek’s army came to Matsu, many soldiers were billeted in the homes of islanders. The second floor of Leimengdi’s house was turned into the military “Gaodeng [Island] Bureau.” When young soldiers sailed in from Taiwan, they would frequently stay in Leimengdi’s house (Fig. 6.12). When the weather and tides permitted it, they would then sail across from Beigan to the facing island of Gaodeng. Despite his youth, Leimengdi observed the fear of these unseasoned soldiers:

Fig. 6.12 Newly arrived soldiers

[They] shrank back from the piercing cold wind, feeling for the first time the vibrations from cannon-fire at the frontline. Leimengdi heard the young soldiers’ low sobs, mixed with their helpless terror. At night, it seemed they were orphans forsaken by the world…Even young Leimengdi could sense their feeling of near-despair

(Xia and Chen Reference Xia and Tianshun2009: 22).

Like the soldiers, Matsu islanders also faced terror, that of losing a loved one at any moment. Once, Leimengdi’s father and a few other men from the village disappeared for several days after accidentally crossing a boundary while fishing (Fig. 6.13). At that time, the whole village was anxious, and wives and children who feared losing their husbands and fathers would burst into tears unexpectedly. Every so often, mainland fishermen who had drifted off course in the mist would appear in the village, and Leimengdi would watch them be blindfolded and dragged off by the soldiers.

Fig. 6.13 Dad has disappeared

Trauma

The trauma of military rule was most keenly felt when loved ones met with violent abuse. The women of Qiaozi often went to the seaside to gather shellfish and seaweed in order to supplement their families’ incomes. To get there, they had to walk near a slope where the garrison barracks were located, and great care was necessary to avoid the notice of the soldiers (Fig. 6.14). One day, Leimengdi’s mother and aunts went to gather wild vegetables. They were caught and held by soldiers from the garrison, and only when village leaders came to negotiate, were they released. That night his mother kept crying in pain, and as Leimengdi salved her back, he saw that she was bruised as though she’d been beaten. Although she never told him what she had experienced, he had a sense of what must have happened. From then on, when he knew she had gone to the seaside, he would wait until dusk and gaze anxiously at the mountain ridge until he glimpsed her and could relax. When Chen mentioned this memory, he said half-jokingly, “When you read that passage, you probably thought I was being filial, right? But it wasn’t filial piety, it was a child’s fear of losing his mother.”

Fig. 6.14 Hiding from soldiers while gathering wild vegetables by the seaside

Oppression

Living under military rule, the fear and psychological trauma of oppression were omnipresent for Matsu islanders. The story entitled “The Disappearing Yellow Croaker” in the book best demonstrates the sense of maltreatment that they experienced during this period (Fig. 6.15). A soldier living on the second floor of Leimengdi’s house received orders to leave Matsu, and he asked Leimengdi’s mother to buy some yellow croaker and dry them in the sun to make “croaker jerky,” a local Matsu specialty, for him to take back to Taiwan. At that time, the yellow croaker catch was minimal, and it rarely appeared in the markets. When they heard that a fisherman had caught some croaker, Leimengdi’s aunt who lived in Tangqi bought a few. She put them in a basket, covered it with a gunnysack, and told Leimengdi to take it on the bus back to Qiaozi.

Fig. 6.15 Where are these yellow croakers from?

Unexpectedly, there were two military policemen and the owner of a seafood restaurant on the bus. Seeing Leimengdi carrying a fish basket, they demanded that he uncover it, and they examined its contents. They saw the fish and asked, “Where are these croakers from? Why aren’t they for sale in the market?” They concluded, “These are illegally hoarded goods,” and confiscated the fish. Tears welled up in Leimengdi’s helpless eyes. He didn’t understand why the fish had been taken from him. When he got off the bus, he was crying and felt confused and helpless as he walked home. When he told his mother what had happened, she immediately hurried off to Tangqi. When she reached the seafood restaurant, she saw that the owner had already gutted and cleaned the confiscated fish.

With this simple story, Chen demonstrated how soldiers were able to join forces with influential locals to wield power, invent excuses for their behavior, and run roughshod over the islanders. Tianshun mentioned this story in my interview with him. The oppression he experienced as a child still lingers in his mind and his anger has not faded.

Indeed, children experienced a special kind of oppression and terror under military rule. Another story in the book, Nighttime Trilogy, describes a separate incident. One night, Leimengdi’s mother told him to take some fish to his uncle in Tangqi. Between Qiaozi and Tangqi was a forest, a forbidden military zone, and a military blockhouse. These areas were viewed with complacency during the day, but at night they became terrifying; it is difficult to measure just how much courage it took for a child to go through them. Chen describes the journey in detail. After Leimengdi left the village, he first had to walk through the deep, dark forest. Concealed among the trees were graves, and the ghosts of the dead flashed here and there; Leimengdi dashed madly and made it to Juguang Fortress where the sentry pointed his rifle at him and shouted: “Halt! What’s the password?” “I’m…I’m just a villager,” Leimengdi answered softly. It wasn’t easy to keep going, but he made it to a lookout post, where a group of cadres were training. Their dogs were famous for their ferocity; one had viciously bitten Leimengdi’s younger brother. Leimengdi started to run through the dark as he heard his own frantic heartbeat and ragged breath, not knowing when his ordeal would be over (Fig. 6.16).

Fig. 6.16 Going to Tangqi at night

Bodily Injury

Aside from terror and oppression, ordinary people were also physically injured in the military zone that Matsu had become. Maimed or crippled characters frequently appear in the Leimengdi series. One example is a man who often passed by Leimengdi’s home. He had been hit with machine gun fire while fishing, and walked with a limp, perspiring heavily from the effort. His sadness makes a deep impression on Leimengdi, who also goes with his mother to visit a distant aunt who has lost an arm to a landmine. He sees her sitting in a dark room with sunken eyes, burdened by her struggle to support three young children with only one arm.

Children were not exempt from adult fates. Chen tells the story of a group of children playing by the seaside who discover a rusty metal case and decide to use it as a target. They take turns throwing rocks at it to see who can hit it, but just as they are getting excited, there is an enormous bang and the box explodes. Four of the children are blinded, including Leimengdi’s older cousin.

Leimengdi’s mother’s story is perhaps the most tragic. As a young newlywed, her new husband was conscripted into a work gang and mortally wounded by a landmine (Fig. 6.17). Unfortunately, at that time marriage was a matter of agreement between two families, and the remote islands did not issue marriage licenses. These marriages were not recognized by the government, so not only was Leimengdi’s mother ineligible for compensation, the young widow had to bear the burden of losing her husband all on her own.

Fig. 6.17 Landmines everywhere

Matsu Locked in Mist

These intractable problems seemed the inexorable fate of the islands. Leimengdi can only stand behind the barbed wire and stare out hopelessly at his own island of Beigan (Fig. 6.18). Xia writes:

Fig. 6.18 Leimengdi standing by barbed wire staring out hopelessly

In Leimengdi, the word “mist” is frequently a metaphor for Matsu caught in a warzone atmosphere:

The Matsu Islands frequently experienced fog, and all communication with the outside world would be cut off. Chen builds a metaphor of the warzone atmosphere as a mist that locks Matsu down so that the people are lost in a miasma, unable to orient themselves or tell which direction they’re heading. For this reason, distant Taiwan became a “treasured island” (baodao) for them. Leimengdi was eager to grow up because his mother often said to him, “When you’re older, you can go to the ‘treasured island of Taiwan.’” When he was fifteen, his mother packed up household possessions, the family’s ancestor tablet, a jar of sand from the coast near their home, and, with him and his younger siblings, left for Taiwan.

Healing through a Wife’s Pen

These rich accounts of the warzone were written by a Taiwanese woman who has never lived in Matsu herself—Chen’s wife Xia Shuhua. The duo’s creative process generally involved Chen telling a story to Xia, who would then write it down. They would discuss it so that Tianshun’s intended meaning would not be lost. Xia’s writing was honed over many years of working in advertising and communications, and her posts have been admiringly received by Matsu islanders. Not only have all of her essays obtained a very high number of views, they have also been reprinted in Matsu Daily. Here is how Chen explains it:

There seems to be a special understanding between husband and wife that engenders a collaboration that is far from simple or one-dimensional. At times, Chen will simply draw a scene, and his wife will freely narrate, allowing her to express her own emotions and imagination. For example, in “New Years Performances,” Chen told her a simple story about an unforgettable snowy New Years Day when he snuggled in his mother’s arms to watch the snowfall (Fig. 6.19).

Fig. 6.19 Leimengdi’s memory of his mother

Xia meticulously wrote out the scene, describing Leimengdi’s warm memories of his mother:

Of course, Xia’s texts do not merely transmit Chen’s memories; she often adds a twist to Chen’s mournful stories of military rule. For instance, in the example above, Leimengdi stares out hopelessly at the confined island of Beigan, not knowing where the islanders could turn. In the following narration, Xia turns this idea into a yearning for change:

Next, she provides some hope for the future of the islands:

This hopeful future transfigured from past sorrows has helped Chen gradually face his painful childhood and reach a sense of self-transcendence and salvation through the creative process. As Chen told me in our interview, “Once it’s written down, I can let it go.” He hopes that his old painful memories will finally be exorcised by the writing.

Xia Shuhua plays an essential role throughout their creative process. For example, in the interview, Chen mentioned that the book was originally called Leimengdi, a transliteration of the name “Raymond” (雷蒙) which would have had fashionable foreign associations. But Xia changed one of the Chinese characters in the name to mean “alliance” (盟) implying that Chen and his homeland of Matsu were reconnected through his writing, and that he had taken an oath of allegiance to it. Undoubtedly, Xia recognized that the experiences of Leimengdi under military rule express Chen’s deepest memories, even in spite of his immigration to Taiwan at a young age. This is also true for many other Matsu islanders who immigrated to Taiwan. As Leimengdi’s senile old father drifts between waking and sleep, he still mumbles about getting on the boat in Keelung to go home.

Relay of Memories

The Leimengdi stories have received tremendous support and participation from Matsu islanders. Whenever a story is published online, netizens often enthusiastically share similar experiences of their own and exchange their intimate feelings publicly. For example, the day after “The Dark Night Trilogy” was published, a netizen responded:

Similarly, when the webmaster of Matsu Online saw that Leimengdi’s father had been captured by the Communist Party, he immediately shared the following post:

Xia’s evocative writing seemed to bring the faded, blurry past back to vivid life for many Matsu emigrants. For example, Huang Jinhua, who had emigrated to Canada, also responded:

Netizens not only use Leimengdi to understand their own histories, they also help Chen to draw more accurate pictures by supplementing gaps in his memory owing to his long absence from Matsu. Their support has provided crucial emotional ballast for the couple to persist with the project. For instance, Tianshun wrote on Matsu Online: “This afternoon I exhausted myself revising a drawing of a kitchen. But when I saw the response of my fellow villager Mu’er, I felt revived…” (Leimengdi Reference Leimengdi2006). For Xia, the internet expanded her world, and the responses of netizens were the strongest impetus behind her writing. She once wrote on Matsu Online:

Indeed, one could say that this work of more than three years could not have been completed without netizens: throughout the process there was a collaboration between the writing and illustrations, the creators and readers, and the locals and non-locals, all of which brought the series to life. As one netizen commented:

The associate webmaster of Matsu Online even asked, “Without Matsu Online, would there even be a book about Leimengdi’s childhood under military rule?” (vice admin 2010). Another netizen’s response speaks to the spirit of online creation: “[One is] like a dazzling dancer, and [the other is] like a beautiful stage, and when they come together…they create a moving performance.” (Qiahogou 2010).

Unsurprisingly, when the Leimengdi series was collected and published as a book in 2009, it was celebrated by netizens, who felt that Leimengdi’s childhood echoed a wider experience:

In sum, it was not Xia Shuhua and Chen Tianshun alone, but also their online readers, who completed this memory of wartime Matsu.

New Subject, New Matsu

The narrative practices of life stories usually exert an important influence on self-formation (Peacock and Holland Reference Peacock and Holland1993: 374; Lambek and Antze Reference Lambek, Antze, Antze and Lambek1996: xxi). The writing of Leimengdi certainly changed Chen and his wife. Online media not only provided new forms of sociality to Tianshun, who had been displaced and had long refused to confront his past and his homeland, but also brought a new understanding of this place. He told me:

Clearly, composing Leimengdi not only offered Chen a new connection to Matsu, it also constituted a process of discovering different aspects of Matsu. “Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time in Matsu, so it’s like I’ve made up for the previous twenty-seven years of absence! (Laughs).” He explained:

That is to say, Tianshun has not only discovered a new Matsu, but also fresh possibilities for the future. In a new era, equipped with new technology, he imagines that he could remake his hometown into a new world to re-inhabit, and to transcend his painful past. As he said:

As he recounted this story to me, I could sense his deep anger at the military’s injustice towards his family. He wants his lands back because they hold bodily traces of injustice and trauma; he is now prepared to confront the past oppressions and abuses by winning back his lands. When I interviewed him in early 2016, Taiwan was in the middle of a presidential election, and the leader of the opposition party had a real chance of winning. He told me: “When the new president takes power, I’m going to write to her personally.” Not only is he demanding the return of his land, he also seeks to redress the issue of his mother’s first husband.

Chen Tianshun’s narration shows that what he is fighting for is not compensation, but rather the right to attach a sense of purpose to his life, a meaning for his existence. Having been reawakened in the process of creating Leimengdi, the afflictions of military rule, which previously caused him so much suffering, have now filled him with new power. He has started to confront his traumatic past by fighting for the ethical value of the unmourned and unremembered many who died because of military rule (see also Kwon Reference Kwon and Lambek2010: 412). By grappling directly with the humiliation and oppression his family suffered, he is attempting to rediscover his morals, emotions, and affects, as well as to restore ethical value to the people who were abandoned by the state.

As for Xia, she said:

Indeed, in the online series, Xia Shuhua not only puts Chen Tianshu’s memories into words, she also frequently writes about her own feelings as a mother and expresses her apprehensions and her gradual coming to terms with aging in posts such as “My Invincible Little Warrior” (Reference Xia2005c), “A 33-Year-Old Mother’s Disneyland,” (Reference Xia2005e), and “Anxieties of Middle Age” (Reference Xia2006a). She says that she “wrote these pieces for myself,” and that she enjoys sharing her youthful dreams and travel stories with fellow netizens. In the piece “The Slow Life” (Reference Xia2006b), she also writes of her love for music, fiction, and soap operas, and describes how a grown woman in the midst of her busy life can still find space for small acts of self-indulgence and ways to enjoy her life (Fig. 6.20). Although the Leimengdi series has ended, Xia has not stopped writing, but continues to produce work and post it on Facebook. Tianshun says: “She’s got a lot of fans on Facebook now.” Of course, after these interviews, I became one of them.

Fig. 6.20 The slow life

Conclusion: Internet Writing as Subjectification

Leimengdi is based on Chen Tianshun’s personal memories of living in Matsu under military rule. It includes his longing for the land there, his family’s common struggles, the oppression and trauma inflicted by the WZA, his anger, and his uncertainty about the fate of the islands. For years after moving with his family to Taiwan, Chen Tianshun chose not to face this painful part of his past. It was only with the advent of the internet that he began to reconstruct his memories and imagine new possibilities for Matsu. He and his wife were in constant dialogue throughout the process of creating their online work. His wife retold the history of the area from her position as a Taiwanese, describing her hopes for the island’s future. With the enthusiastic support of the online community, Chen was gradually able to face his own wounds and past misfortune, and to begin to heal. Through his Leimengdi stories, he was able to reconnect to the land and the people of Matsu. He not only repositioned himself, but also developed a fresh understanding of Matsu. He imagined different possibilities for the islands and himself – it is an island of hope for him now. For Chen Tianshu, writing is a process of subjectification. By drawing, writing, and sharing his work, he was gradually healed, turning himself into a subject. Bringing morals, emotions and affects together, he was able to transcend his old selves, and rediscovered a capacity to act.

However, Leimengdi was more than just Chen’s personal reminiscence; it gave the people of Matsu an account of a shared history. It was chosen as a “Book of Matsu” precisely because it offered a “collectivity-in-the-person” (White Reference White2000, Reference White2001: 504), or a “memory of memories” (Cappelletto Reference Cappelletto and Cappelletto2005a: 23), representing the painful and violent experiences of a people under military rule in the form of a single child’s story. That this web-based series of wartime memories could be woven so quickly reminds us of a key effect of internet technology in contemporary society. Over recent years, scholars have probed the interface between individual and collective memory.² Many works have pointed out how focusing on narrative practices (White Reference White2000, Reference White2004) or new mediational means (Miklavcic Reference Miklavcic2008, Lambek and Antze Reference Lambek, Antze, Antze and Lambek1996) can transcend the dichotomy of the individual and the collective, the psychological and the socio-structural. The ability to read and write provided by Web 2.0 meant that netizens could immediately receive and respond, and this made online collective creation possible. These choral effects are particularly clear in the Leimengdi series: the individual is no longer a sole writer, but in a relay of emotion. Whether living in Matsu, Taiwan, or elsewhere in the world, Matsu people can come together and interact in the virtual world, composing their war memories communally. Through the course of this process, netizens participate in a “social curation” (Macek Reference Macek2013), mingling the individual and the social, thereby producing a new collective identity.

These memories, furthermore, carrying as they do the load of shared traumatic experiences, are imbued with a power and agency that can erupt at any moment. Leimengdi thus is an important foundation for Part III in which I will discuss how this history of common struggle has become an internal motivating force for the people of Matsu to pursue better futures for the islands after the suspension of military rule. In the face of an uncertain future, the people of Matsu not only use internet technology, but also apply all kinds of ways to connect themselves with the broader world.