The final flashpoint of the Chinese civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Communists, Kinmen is a small island under Taiwanese control but located 2km off the coast of Fujian province, China.

From 1949, throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, Chinese cannons pounded Kinmen with over one million rounds. The earliest fighting took place on the Kuningtou battlefield, where, in a battle lasting 56 hours, 15000 lives were lost. A later major battle was the 823 artillery barrage, which lasted 44 days and had the US Air Force preparing for a nuclear strike against the People’s Republic of China.

Today, with easing of tensions between the Taiwan (ROC) and China (PRC), Kinmen has become a popular tourist destination. It is still home to a substantial number of Taiwanese soldiers, but there are also a lot of unused and abandoned miltary sites. Here a few abandoned, eroded bunkers and tunnels.

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