Kinmen National Park Headquarters held an opening activity for Deyue Tower which is located in Shuitou village on May 15. Pupils from Gucheng Elementary School gave musical performances and local people were invited to share the occasion to promote the development of partnership relations between the headquarters and local people and facilitate the preservation of Overseas Chinese culture. Displays show how the migrants from Kinmen lived overseas, effectively achieving an interpretation and education function.

Shuitou Deyue Tower and Huang Hui-huang’s Western house were built in 1931 and, after surviving more than 70 years of weathering and war, they were badly in need of renovation. From May 2005, Kinmen National Park began renovation work using a “renovate according to how it originally was” principle. In January 2008 work was finished and the acceptance inspection completed and plans were made to use the buildings to display how migrants from Kinmen lived overseas and their culture and, at the same time, combine the Overseas Chinese culture of Shuitou with Deyue Tower’s defensive features, to give visitors a taste of the insecurity felt by people in the early years of the Republic of China, a time when measures had to be taken to guard against attack by pirates, and appreciate the effort and ingenuity of the builder, Huang Hui-huang.

Translated by：Kevin Lax
Source：Kinmen National Park Headquarters