'A small fish in a sea of sharks': The isle caught between China and Taiwan

Lu, who wears a black T-shirt and glasses, pulls a bag out from under his scooter seat then heads down to the beach. "Oh!" exclaims the 43-year-old once making it down to the shore. Lu bends down to pick up a worn plastic bottle that has washed up beside his foot and puts it in his bag. "Wet Chinese plastic," he says flatly. He points to the simplified Chinese characters on the packaging indicating the bottle's origin – mainland China. Lu is not at the beach to stroll among the rusty anti-landing spikes protruding from concrete blocks – a reminder of Kinmen's role as a front-line island between China and Taiwan. Nor has he come to marvel at the lights that now glitter in the dusk from the skyscrapers of the Chinese metropolis of Xiamen, less than 10km (6.2 miles) away across Xiamen Bay. Instead, he has come to the western coast of Kinmen to collect rubbish. When Lu is not working as an administrator at a local tourism office, he contributes to keeping Kinmen clean by picking up rubbish. Tides, weather and ocean currents as well as Kinmen's proximity to Xiamen and the mouth of the polluted Jiulong River in China have left the island exposed to large quantities of waste.