Word: quemoy
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Quemoy was once a barren outpost, but Chiang Kai-shek is said to have decreed in 1951: "Make it green." So the Nationalists have planted 70 million seedling trees, mostly Australian pine. They have since added bananas, mangoes, pears and apples. There are fields of corn and sorghum that help to make the island's 62,000 civilian inhabitants self-sufficient. The island even has a frail industrial base, a pottery plant and a liquor distillery. "For the soldiers, we have a lot of peanut candy shops and billiard parlors," a guide remarks...
Hidden Guns. Driving along the modern paved highways that crisscross Quemoy, one can imagine the island as a bucolic, semitropical retreat, but under the lush greenery are machine-gun and artillery emplacements, truck depots, trenches, and the gaping mouths of tunnels that honeycomb the hills. Blasted out of solid rock, these tunnels are 25 by 35 ft., large enough so that tanks and trucks can drive for miles inside them. One tunnel where the molelike troops are quartered contains half a mile of double-decked bunks. There is even a 1,000-seat theater hollowed out of the granite. Everywhere...
...that reaches deep into the mainland. High-altitude balloons intermittently shower propaganda leaflets on the "enemy," with slogans like "Chiang Kai-shek is concerned about you." The hope is that the leaflets and the broadcasts will inspire mass defections. In fact, the last defector from the mainland to reach Quemoy was a fisherman who swam ashore in November...
...Quemoy still has its few moments of actual warfare, though nothing like the 175,000 rounds of shells that came pounding in during one two-day period in 1960. According to a Nationalist officer, artillery duels are confined to odd-numbered nights, and they usually involve only about 40 or 50 symbolic rounds, which explode in sparsely populated areas and cause little damage. On one such night in Quemoy City, however, the showing of a propaganda film on the island's impregnable defenses was interrupted by three artillery shells that went off right outside the building. Quemoy...
Every able-bodied citizen on Quemoy is issued his own rifle and must visit a firing range for target practice at least once a month. Women also must serve in the militia. There are a number of dummy soldiers, too, who bravely man fake machine guns to decoy Communist spotters. Privately, though, even some government officials concede that the mountain of military hardware may not be necessary, and that unification with the mainland may be inevitable. Back on Taiwan, where younger bureaucrats and even some young legislators are quietly discussing the changes that will come when Mao and Chiang...