Xiamen

My mother's beautiful childhood hometown, also known as Amoy. The older people here speak the same unintelligible dialect (Min-Nan, or Taiwanese) that my mom does. We visited idyllic Gulangyu Island filled with 19th century European style villas lining its narrow walks. Climbed to the top of the Sunny Rock (Ri-Guang Yan) at the summit of this granite island, where insciptions commemorate the 17th century warlord Zheng Cheng-Gong who fought Dutch colonialists and recovered the island of Taiwan for Chinese people. From the top of this rock we saw bustling fishing boats in the harbor and in the distance the island of Quemoy belonging to Taiwan, or Nationalist China.