Matsu

About Matsu

The Matsu Islands (UK: or US: ) are an archipelago of 36 islands and islets in the East China Sea. They are situated alongside the southeastern coast of mainland China. The archipelago forms Lienchiang County, the smallest county in the Taiwan Area by area and population, as well as one of two counties that is a part of the nominal Fuchien Province that is administered by the Republic of China.

The current Lienchiang County of the ROC was once part of an intact Lienchiang County of Fujian before its effective partition in 1949 following the Chinese Civil War, which resulted in the mainland portion of the county being controlled by the People's Republic of China (PRC), while the offshore islands of Matsu remained under ROC control. The circumstance has made the county the only former geographical unit with the same name that is now divided between the administrations of the ROC and the PRC.

Lienchiang County, Taiwan (R.O.C.) uses the traditional Chinese characters name (連江縣) and the romanized name Lienchiang which is derived from the Wade–Giles romanization (Lien²-chiang¹) of the Mandarin pronunciation for those Chinese characters that also refer to Lianjiang County, Fuzhou...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.