During the cold war, Quemoy was Taiwan's island fortress against mainland China. It is so close to Xiamen , Fujian province , that one of Taiwan's most popular urban legends is that Taiwanese frogmen based on the island used to swim to Xiamen on drunken dares, bringing back movie ticket stubs as proof of their perilous journey.
Since 2002, it has been a lot easier to get to Xiamen. That was the year the Taiwanese government quietly began permitting ferry services between Quemoy and Xiamen. Now thousands of Taiwanese, including Quemoy residents, cross the border each day on the ferry.
Some Quemoy residents, though, think the crossing has become too easy. The county government recently prohibited local civil servants from visiting the mainland more than three times a year. Additional trips are permitted only if their spouse goes along. This is because some Quemoy husbands have taken mistresses on the mainland - a practice known by the somewhat vulgar Putonghua term baoernai - 'to take a second wife'. Many of these erring husbands disappear on Friday around 5pm dressed up in their best flowery shirts, reeking of cologne and jingling the week's grocery money in their pockets.
The local county government has been inundated with calls from local women who want their husbands to stay at home. Not wanting to appear to be condoning public immorality, the county government responded with the new, trial regulations. The response in Quemoy has been decidedly mixed. Civil servants with business ventures on the mainland grumbled about the restriction on legitimate visits. Others complained that their constitutional right to free travel was being violated.
Back in Taipei, the media tittered at Quemoy's conservative island mores. They juxtaposed interviews with country women who support the new regulations with smug, almost approving accounts of how many of Xiamen's biggest sex businesses are run by Taiwanese entrepreneurs. The new regulations will probably be shelved after a six-month trial period without enforcement. Either that, or discreet new ferry services will appear on the sly.
The entire episode can be viewed as an old-fashioned and probably hopeless effort to legislate public morality by forcing civil servants to serve as ethical examples for the masses. But it is also interesting because the Quemoy county government has been pushing for full contact with the mainland, to revive its moribund economy. Yet, now Quemoy is also trying to regulate the social effects of that contact.