Artillery guns still point toward the easily visible Chinese mainland and anti-tank barriers still dot the shoreline, spoiling what in another country might be an overrun tourist hotspot.

With fears of a conflict receding and the government keen to promote trade, Kinmen has found a new status as a bridgehead for limited direct links between Taiwan and China.

"The battles are over. I hope the painful lessons will never happen again," said Wu Tseng-dong, who has manufactured hundreds of thousands of knives from artillery shells fired from across the water.

Taiwan's presidential election Saturday may help determine that.

The election frontrunner, Ma Ying-jeou of the opposition Kuomintang, has vowed to forge closer ties and sign a peace agreement with China, which still claims Taiwan as part of its territory.

In contrast, rival Frank Hsieh, of the ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, has focused his campaign on stressing Taiwan's sovereignty, although he too has called for better relations.

In what was then an unprecedented move, Taiwanese authorities in December 2004 allowed Chinese tourists to visit the militarily sensitive Kinmen island for the first time.

"For a long time, Chinese people could only glimpse this mysterious island from Xiamen. Now they are allowed to see for themselves what it looks like and how people here live," said Fu Yang-tu, a Kinmen county official.

Ferry boats provide 24 sailings a day to and from China, mostly carrying Taiwanese businessmen between here and the cities of Xiamen and Quanzhou in China's southeastern Fujian province.

Such links are a rarity for Taiwan, which split from the mainland in 1949 and remains wary of China's intentions toward the self-governing nation.

Kinmen also touts well-preserved traditional buildings and is an unpolluted haven sheltering at least 250 species of migratory birds, Fu said.

Nevertheless, Chinese tourists made only 34,000 visits to Kinmen last year despite it lying just a few kilometres (miles) from the mainland.

"That is far, far lower than our initial expectation of 600 people a day," Fu lamented.

Despite the exchanges, which began in 1987, the tens of thousands of mines studded across the island, mostly on the beaches, are a constant reminder of old hostilities between Taipei and Beijing.

Taiwan has budgeted nearly 150 million US dollars to try to eliminate the unknown number of landmines on 153 separate sites to ward off an invasion, but the task is proceeding at a snail's pace.

As of now, only two percent of the mine areas have been cleaned up.

According to a recent Pentagon report, as of last November China still had up to 1,070 short-range ballistic missiles deployed opposite Taiwan.

Beijing has repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan should it declare its formal independence.

Taiwan consequently has a sizeable defence budget of its own, representing some 2.85 percent of gross domestic product in 2007.

In 1958 tensions spilled over into a 44-day artillery duel between Kinmen and the mainland, during which China's People's Liberation Army lobbed nearly 480,000 shells onto the island of 150 square kilometres (58 square miles).

China tossed over a further half a million shells filled with propaganda material during the next 20 years.

Liu Shuang-yin, 82, a former sergeant in an artillery unit based on Kinmen, recalled the 1958 battle.

"I had destroyed an enemy ammunition depot by the time we were ordered to hold firing," he told AFP. "I was awarded 20,000 Taiwan dollars (650 US) for this as a war hero."

"But I dared not tell my relatives about this event when I returned to the mainland for a family reunion in 1987," he chuckled.

Liu said he would vote for Ma, trusting he will deliver a peace agreement with Beijing and, one day, build a road bridge between Kinmen and the Chinese mainland.

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