Military History | 莒光樓 — The Building That Became the Island's Picture

Before the shelling made Kinmen famous for being shelled, the island had a picture of itself, and this is the building in it. 莒光樓 stands above 莒光湖 in 金城鎮 on a plan that hides nothing about its intent: a classical city-gate tower, painted and bracketed in the old manner, set on top of a plain grey modern block. 交通部觀光署 describes it as raised to mark the officers and men killed in Kinmen's successive battles; 金門日報 records that the order to build came from 胡璉, who commanded on the island.

Then it went to work as an image. The tower became the standard photograph of a garrison island few outsiders would ever reach, and 金門觀光旅遊網 counts four ROC stamp issues carrying it between 1959 and 1964. 胡璉's 青天白日勳章 is displayed inside it.

Two things about the building are not settled. 交通部觀光署 and 金門觀光旅遊網 both date it to 1952; a 金門日報 article puts the opening in 1955. The architect is murkier. 胡璉's memoir 《金門憶舊》 credits a 沈學海, a name that 金門日報 reports nobody has been able to trace; in the same paper, 張示霖 argues that no architect of that name existed and that the designer was his grandfather 張靜波, citing a diary entry of 9 March 1957 that lists 莒光樓 among his works. 張示霖 also offers a reason for the silence — his grandfather had worked on building projects for the Nanjing government of 汪兆銘 during the war with Japan, and kept his name off things afterwards.

The tower is open to visitors, three storeys of exhibition under the painted roof, looking across the water at the mainland coast.

📸 Cover: 莒光樓 in July 2018. Photo by 姜明雄, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.