Having completed a tour of six lighthouses where his late father served as a watchman, a man from Pingtung County said he hopes the new government respects heroes such as his father who quietly contributed to the nation by fulfilling their duties.
Nien Chi-cheng (念吉成) on Thursday last week visited Beiding Island (北椗島) Lighthouse to honor his father, who once served on the remote atoll in the Kinmen archipelago.
Nien said his father, Nien Hsing-pei (念興培) — a lighthouse watchman his whole life — passed away 30 years ago.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsien, Taipei Times
Nien Chi-cheng decided in 2011 to tour the lighthouses his father had worked in.
“Due to its remote location, Beiding Island Lighthouse was the last of the group I visited,” he said.
Maritime and Port Bureau Director-General Chi Wen-jong (祁文中) and Lighthouse Superintendent Chen Chien-kuo (陳建國) helped him with the travel arrangements, Nien Chi-cheng said, adding that it was important to him that he finished the tour the day before President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) inauguration on Friday.
“Tsai once said that ‘it is the collective striving of the people that makes this nation great,’” Nien Chi-cheng said. “With this in mind, I hope the government respects and restores our history, so that the nameless heroes who have quietly contributed to the nation by manning their posts might not be forgotten.”
According to the bureau, Beiding Island is 0.08 km2 in size, and has no electricity or running water; its small group of lighthouse personnel, rotated every 15 days, are supplied with auto batteries, desalinated seawater and rations by sea.
Because transit to the atoll is dependent on the tides, Nien Chi-cheng arrived at the atoll by boat at 10am and had to depart within the hour.
He was tearful during the voyage, saying: “Visiting the island today helped me understand how lonely it was to be a lighthouse watchman on Beiding Island.”
Nien Chi-cheng said his father was transferred in 1945 from Niushandao Lighthouse in China’s Fujian Province to Beiding Island, and in the following year was transferred to a lighthouse in Penghu.
Nien Chi-cheng said that after his father was stationed on Beiding, he had no further contact with his family in Fujian.
Nien Chi-cheng said he plans to write a book about the history of Taiwan’s lighthouse watchmen.
The Beiding Lighthouse was built in 1882 and its original uppermost structure was destroyed by US bombers during World War II, the bureau said.
In 1996, when Chinese launched missiles into the Taiwan Strait, the lighthouse staff were ordered to “live and perish with the lighthouse” and to write their wills, the bureau said.
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