Beishan Broadcast Station: wall of (anti-communist) sound
May 26, 2020 7:21 AM Subscribe
Quemoy or Kinmen County (Wikipedia) is two groups of islands governed by the Republic of China and located just off the southeastern coast of mainland China. In the late 1960s, Taiwan made use of this proximity (Google maps) to set up four structures to reach out to mainland China. One of the remaining structures is a 30-foot-tall concrete block, honeycombed with 48 large holes with a speaker inside each (Google streetview panorama). The Beishan Broadcast Station was used to blast anticommunist messages across the Taiwan Strait, from Kinmen into China (Atlas Obscura). Now it is periodically used at a much lower volume (YouTube).
That recording is of Teresa Teng's message and a few of her songs, now played a very moderate volume, just for visiting tourists to hear. Teng was said to be the favourite of the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, according to a BBC article on the Beishan Broadcast Station and a modern re-use in 2018. That was when a group of artists (Sonic Territories) reactivated one of the surviving military-grade sound systems for a politically charged performance (Artnet).
Bonus links:
That recording is of Teresa Teng's message and a few of her songs, now played a very moderate volume, just for visiting tourists to hear. Teng was said to be the favourite of the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, according to a BBC article on the Beishan Broadcast Station and a modern re-use in 2018. That was when a group of artists (Sonic Territories) reactivated one of the surviving military-grade sound systems for a politically charged performance (Artnet).
Bonus links:
- South China Morning Post shared five of Teresa Teng’s best hit songs to celebrate her 65th birthday on 29 January 2018.
- You can also visit the Mashan Broadcasting and Observation Station (Wanderlex), known by locals as "the shouting station," another location used to project music and messages to mainland China (Kinmen Travel).
- The University of North Carolina's site on American Diplomacy has a page on Quemoy and Matsu, which are now almost forgotten, but the two islands where once a flashpoint in the Cold War and a subject of the 1960 presidential debates, following the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises (Global Security x2).
This is amazing.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:37 AM on May 26, 2020
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:37 AM on May 26, 2020
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posted by mykescipark at 7:46 AM on May 26, 2020