The grand houses on Taiwan’s Quemoy islands that were built by its wealthy migrants
- The Quemoy islanders left their homes in droves from the 17th century, many moving to Southeast Asia
- After making their fortunes, many sent money home to their villages and built spectacular residences
Tsai Kai-kuo was 16 when he migrated from Shuitou Village, on what is now Taiwan’s Quemoy archipelago (also known as Kinmen), to Payakumbuh, a city in Indonesia’s West Sumatra.
It was 1900 when Tsai packed his bags in hope of finding a more prosperous life. A lack of fresh water and poor quality soil made life difficult in Quemoy, and many of its natives moved away.
Quemoy islanders migrated in large numbers to Southeast Asia – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore – between the 17th and 20th century, according to historical records and family histories.
Tsai Huei-min, a Taiwanese politician and former associate professor of National Taiwan Normal University, wrote in a 2003 research paper, Island Biocultural Assemblages – The Case of Kinmen Island, that in the 14 years from 1915 to 1929, the archipelago’s population plunged from 70,400 to 37,500.
The islands are situated only a few miles offshore from China’s Fujian province. Today, it takes only 30 minutes by ferry from Quemoy to reach the city of Xiamen, which was historically a transit point for migrants moving south.
In Payakumbuh, Tsai Kai-kuo initially made a living as a labourer, before becoming a merchant and selling locally sourced products such as tobacco, bananas and pepper to the Dutch colonists in what was then the Dutch East Indies. He later married a local Chinese woman.