Yesterday I told you that I spent a night in the baroque-styled, five-story "hotel,"  Lin Mansion, in Gu Lang Yu. Actually, the majority of the houses on the island are built in western styles. Except some pavilions, there are hardly any Chinese-styled houses, nor are there any modern high-rise buildings.

Why is that? I guess it is because Xiamen was one of the first batch of ports that was forced to open to the west in the late Qin Dynasty, and then swarms of invaders from the west and Japan came. Gu Lang Yu, an islet besides Xiamen, was their target, because from there they could watch the entire Xiamen harbor and inspect the ships in and out. Can you believe it? There were 18 consulates, or qusi-consultes, gathering on a tiny island like Gu Lang Yu. Therefore, the western architecture of houses dominated, and because the lay of the land is sinuous, the houses were built relatively lower.

The biggest and most famous house on the island is the remains of that British consulate, which was recovered by China in 1964. The local government kept the consulate well and intact but remodeled the outside staircase up there. The stairway has four portions, and each one has a different step(s), say 1, 9, 6, and 4, to rememorize that memorable year. By the way, there is also a huge statue of Zheng Chengon on a headland facing Taiwan.

Gu Lang Yu is now a tourism mecca for Chinese people, but it is also an indelible mark of humiliation for the past.