Residents Of Taiwan's Outer Islands Relax Watching China's Military Exercises: 1958 Was More Stressful

JAKARTA - Yang Yin-shih, a resident of the Kinmen Islands, a small island closest to China, chooses to carry out activities as usual. There is no tension despite knowing the Chinese military is holding unprecedented war games.

Yang Yin-shih is a war veteran who is now 92 years old. He chose to continue his activities as usual. Enjoy the newspaper in his hand.

The Kinmen Archipelago is just a small island. A few miles from his home, is mainland China. When the military there was showing off, it could threaten their homeland at any time.

China has just carried out a super serious war game. This military exercise is China's response to the arrival of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the capital of Taiwan.

As Chinese ships dot the Taiwan Strait and missiles fall into the waters around the island, the real risk of conflict comes to mind.

However Yang is not affected. Whereas the Kinmen Islands with a population of 140,000 people are only 3.2 km across from the city of Xiamen in China.

"I'm not nervous. Kinmen is calm and composed," Yang was quoted as saying by Channel News Asia, Saturday, August 13.

Yang is a living witness to China's deadliest bombardment of Taiwan's closest islands to the mainland more than 60 years ago. For him, China's military training this time was small compared to what he had experienced.

China's war games cannot be compared to the 1958 bombing of the Taiwan-held Kinmen Islands. In 1958, China fired more than a million rounds at Kinmen. Killed 618 people and injured more than 2,600.

"The bombing (1958) was more tense. It was more tense," he said.

"It's hard to say the situation - whether (China) intends to intimidate or has plans to attack."

"Taiwan is freer and we don't want to be ruled by China," he said.

"But we have to make ends meet."

But there are divisions in the islands, with some Kinmen residents ready to defend their homeland against Chinese aggression.

“If there is a war, I will fight,” said Huang Zi-chen, a 27-year-old civil engineer.

"I was born in this country and I had to go through ups and downs when my country needed me," he said.