'You Flew All the Way from the US to See Matsu?'

choi

Thomas Vien, A Letter From Taiwan's Cold War Ruins. Stratfor, Nov 15, 2015.
https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/letter-taiwans-cold-war-ruins

Note:
(a) "The tides break on an empty fortress, and silently silently return.     – Liu Yuxi 刘 禹锡, 'City of Stone,' AD 826"

石头城 （南京的别称）. 百度百科, undated
baike.baidu.com/subview/83735/5072557.htm
(section 4 相关诗歌: 刘禹锡, 石头城 ('潮打空城寂寞回') )
(b) "In the strictest sense, Matsu is not Taiwan. That much became clear as soon as I stepped off the ramp of the ferry. The Taiwanese soldiers that disembarked with me spoke Mandarin and their native language, a dialect descended from the one spoken in southern Fujian, where most Taiwanese can trace their ancestry. The locals, by contrast, spoke a language more similar to the dialect spoken in northern Fujian. The stark linguistic divide hinted at the fact that the residents of the Matsu Island group, situated between Taiwan and the Fujian Province of mainland China, have more cultural affinity with the Chinese in the city of Fuzhou just across the strait than with the Taiwanese."

马祖列岛 (闽江口 and 连江口; 福州話 (part of 閩東話))

(c) "Even now ties Matsu is geographically and culturally distant from Taiwan. One of my Taiwanese friends casually estimated that 99.8 percent of Taiwanese had never even visited. The locals themselves were incredulous that I had come: 'You flew all the way from the United States to see Matsu?' was their invariable reaction. For them, the idea that anyone would want to visit their tiny archipelago in the Taiwan Strait is a strange one."
(d) "Today, a giant plaque still hangs over Matsu's Fuao Harbor as a testament to the island's military history. The inscription reads 'Sleep on Spears and Await the Dawn'—written in Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's own calligraphy in 1958."

福澳港 is located at 南竿鄉
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/南竿鄉
(馬祖列島面積最大、人口最多的島; 中華民國福建省連江縣政府所在地)
(e) For Quemoy, see Kinmen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinmen
(section 1 Names)