"I was so nervous that I didn't know if anyone followed me," he said. "I could still hear the air base's communications when I landed at Quemoy airport." Chiang said he left his parents, a sister, and his grandmother behind.
After decades of ideological torment, China is trying to create an economy, well, much like Quemoy's, where private enterprise and state industries coexist under an authoritarian government.
In 1984, a museum was opened to highlight the October 1949 battle that left Quemoy in Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's hands.