Travel to Taiwan’s island – Matsu (5)
continue…Travel to Taiwan’s island – Matsu
Transportation has long been the biggest headache for the people of Matsu. It’s also the biggest obstacle toward developing tourism on the island.
Currently, the island is largely dependent on airplanes and boats. But because the lay of the land is so hilly, the runway at Peikan Airport is only 890 meters long, too short to install an instrument-based landing system. Pilots have to fly by sight, and the only planes from Taiwan that can land here are the 37-seat DASH-8-200s owned by Uni Air. In fog or heavy rain, the airport, which has been the site of two plane crashes, has to close.
As for traveling by sea, the Taiwan-Matsu route is plied by boats that hold 500 passengers. Yet these old boats can’t go out when the sea is rough. On the day of a scheduled journey, passengers have to call first and ask whether the boats are sailing that day. It’s very inconvenient.
“When even transporting people is so difficult, you can forget about shipping out local goods,” says Kao Ming-chung, whose Paoli Hsuen shop specializes in making such local delicacies as Matsu cakes. This is the main reason why Matsu’s local products are still virtually unknown elsewhere in Taiwan.
The local government is aware of the problem and considers improving transportation to be its most pressing task. County Executive Liu notes that there are plans to obtain new boats and that a new airport is under construction. Just months after the three links were first implemented, there are still some bottlenecks, but Liu assures us that over the next half year, transportation difficulties will be resolved.
An extension of Peikan Airport’s eastern runway to 1000 meters should be completed by July, at which time it will be able to handle 50-passenger DASH-8-300 planes, which are owned by various domestic airlines. What’s more, a 1000-meter runway should open at a new airport in Nankan in March of 2002.
With Matsu no longer on the frontlines of military confrontation, the number of troops should continue decreasing from the more than 10,000 that used to be stationed here to only a few thousand. To replace this economic pillar of support, people in Matsu are looking for tourism to bring long-term benefits. Although they’ve encountered plenty of obstacles this year, the people of Matsu have turned a liability into an asset by regarding this period as a time to plan more carefully.
Liao Yuen-lung, the head of the Matsu National Scenic Area Administration, formerly worked in the ROC Tourism Bureau. Observing the people in Matsu, he has come to some insights about their confidence.
“Matsu has some obvious tourist draws,” Liao says. “For ecotourism, there are the virgin stands of timber, and the Chinese crested terns, those ‘legendary birds’ that have caused such a stir. What’s more, the military facilities here are even denser than those seen on the border of north and south Korea, and the traditional eastern Fujianese fishing culture is quite different from the southern Fujianese culture seen in Taiwan, Penghu and Kinmen. Then there are the religious buildings and the well-preserved and intact traditional villages.” Yet the island’s biggest advantage for tourism lies in the fact that it has been off-limits for so long. Now its tourist industry can slowly and carefully advance, avoiding the pitfalls that tourism has encountered elsewhere.
Liao cites the examples of Green Island and Kinmen. When these places were first opened to tourists, they became popular destinations overnight, so that large numbers of hotels and restaurants were built all at once. Supply ended up exceeding demand, so that the market was thrown out of equilibrium. Now the tourist industry is suffering in those places.
“With the lessons learned from others’ mistakes, the county government has asked for thorough advance planning, and the ROC Tourism Bureau is working with the island’s authorities. Matsu’s careful and steady efforts to build up its tourism industry have earned it a lot of respect.”
