Taiwan bar on frontline with China blends history into cocktails

KINMEN, Taiwan - In Taiwan's Kinmen, less than an hour's boat ride from the Chinese cities of Xiamen and Quanzhou, bar owner Powei Lee draws crowds by blending the tiny island's battle-scared past into cocktails.

During the height of the Cold War, Chinese and Taiwanese forces regularly clashed over Kinmen - then mostly known in English as Quemoy - and other islets controlled by Taipei along China's coast.

While today Kinmen is a fashionable tourist destination, drawing visitors to see its endangered otters and stark natural beauty, it has been back in the news after China last week included areas round the island for its latest war games near Taiwan.

Kinmen native Lee's cocktails at his Vent Bar showcase Kinmen's unique flavour, such as the local fire water, Kaoliang, made with sorghum grown on the island.

Lee, 31, has designed one cocktail inspired by an extensive propaganda campaign which followed fighting in 1958, when Taiwanese forces fended off a Chinese attack on Kinmen, whose closest point is only around two kilometres from China.

Called "Pick and Eat", the cocktail is made with a base of soy milk, ginger and whisky, topped with cookies.

"Back then, the two sides would drop propaganda leaflets, each trying to show that their side was doing better and urging the other to surrender," he told Reuters.

"One of the things they would do besides the leaflets was to send over supplies like snacks and food, to show that the people were well-fed."

Taiwan has controlled Kinmen, and the Matsu islands further up the coast, since the defeated Republic of China government fled to Taipei in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong's communists. No peace treaty has ever been signed.

Old bunkers, many now open to visitors,