Kinmen

Kinmen (金門), historically romanized as Quemoy, is an archipelago lying just a few kilometers off the coast of Xiamen in Fujian Province, close enough to see mainland China from its shores. The islands were the site of the Battle of Guningtou in 1949, where Nationalist forces repelled a Communist invasion that might otherwise have ended the Republic of China, and the 823 Artillery Bombardment of 1958, when nearly half a million shells fell in 44 days. Decades of martial law and heavy garrisoning inadvertently preserved one of the finest collections of traditional southern Fujianese architecture in existence. Since 1995 roughly a quarter of the island is now protected as Kinmen National Park.