Three letters from home and one photo have become his thoughts for half a century and the regret of his life.
In 1989, the 70-year-old He Cannan was lying on the hospital bed. He stared blankly into the distance, holding the family letter tightly in his hand, muttering "go home", and the light in his eyes went out little by little.
Before he died, he seemed to be back under the banyan tree in his hometown. His mother was shaking the cattail leaf fan at the bottom of the tree, and his younger brothers and sisters were holding watermelons just fished out of the well water, baring their white teeth and waving to him cheerfully.
That was the home he had thought about all his life.
But now, there is only a strait between them, but it has become the other side that he cannot reach in his whole life.
Because he is a veteran who went to Taiwan.
But compared to other Taiwanese veterans who will never be able to return home in their lifetime, he is extremely lucky, because 30 years later, his granddaughter will take him home.
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In 1919, He Cannan was born in Zhaoqing, Guangdong, in a small village under Qixing Rock. He was the eldest of three brothers and sisters in the family.
When he was a teenager, because his family was poor, he took the initiative to drop out of school and work in order to allow his younger siblings to continue studying. Although life is difficult, when the family is together, no matter how bitter it is, it is sweet.
However, his life was rewritten because of "catching young men".
At the beginning of 1949, the defeat of the Kuomintang was a foregone conclusion. At this time, Chiang Kai-shek was powerless. He could only accept the advice of his subordinates and retreat to Taiwan, and then make a comeback after recharging his strength.
In order to regain power as soon as possible, Chiang Kai-shek also made a counterattack plan on the mainland of " one year of preparation, three years of mopping up, and five years of success", and the most important part of the plan was conscription.
However, after decades of war, people have finally waited for the dawn of peace, so how can they be willing to continue to wander with the Kuomintang.
As a result, conscription turned into "catching young men", especially in coastal areas. When officers caught people, they threw them on the ship, even teenagers.
He Cannan was arrested on his way to work. After he was forced to join the army, he followed the army and came to Taiwan in a daze, where he began his duckweed rootless life.
When they arrived in Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek promised to take them home soon.
However, they waited year after year, and when the government wanted to massively reduce the army, they discovered to their horror that they had been "retired".
Moreover, the severance pay only consisted of a mosquito net, a roll of mats and a few hundred yuan. They were so impoverished that they could only live in a military village.
Military dependents' villages are also called villages from other provinces. They are all captured veterans.
The local Taiwanese are very xenophobic. They mock veterans as "honored citizens" and are unwilling to deal with them. They will not hire them for ordinary jobs.
Moreover, most of the veterans were captured when they were teenagers. They could not read a few Chinese characters and had no skills. They could only do cheap manual work, such as doing coolies, moving rocks at the beach, clearing wasteland, etc.
They are like marginalized people abandoned by society. They have no money and poor health. Most of them cannot marry a wife and can only live alone.
Some people even wrapped themselves in mats and lay on the ground waiting to die.
He Cannan is the lucky one among them. He met a Taiwanese girl, and the two gave birth to three sons and stayed together for a lifetime.
But even if He Cannan settled in Taiwan, he did not dare to forget his roots. He named his children and grandchildren according to the family tree. His son was from the generation with the character "家", and his grandson was from the generation with the character "Yong" to express his longing for his family. Affection.
Veterans in Taiwan, who would miss home?
However, in Taiwan at that time, anyone who said "I want to go back to the mainland" would be arrested, and going home was even more impossible.
Until 1987, their lives took a turn for the better.
Looking for old friends
That year, Taiwan’s veterans who had been silent for nearly 40 years finally broke out.
They cry out that they have been wanderers for most of their lives, and they cannot be wandering souls after death. Even if they die, their souls must return to their hometown.
As a result, tens of thousands of Taiwanese veterans gathered on the streets of Taipei, wearing white shirts that read "I want to go home, I want my mother." They pulled banners and shouted at the top of their lungs:
" For so many years, we didn't know ourselves. Are your parents still alive? , we can still offer you a cup of tea when we go back; if we have passed away, we can still offer you a stick of incense.”
Finally, under the resistance of Taiwanese veterans, Chiang Ching-kuo, under the pressure of public opinion, announced in November of the same year that Taiwanese veterans You can return to the mainland in the name of visiting relatives.
On that day, 100,000 application forms for family visits were swept away in an instant.
People-to-people exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have resumed. He Cannan's sister, He Qiaoru, finally found her brother with the help of her friend Mr. Feng from Hong Kong.
When she received the first letter from her brother, she touched the familiar words on the envelope and couldn't help but blush.
The affectionate greetings in the letter made her burst into tears, and her unstoppable tears seemed to drain away all the years of longing and grievances.
She finally fulfilled her parents' last wish and found her brother.
Although the two are separated by two places, my brother is still alive. This is great luck!
communicated with his brother and became He Qiaoru’s spiritual support. However, it takes too long to mail letters, sometimes it takes more than half a year to receive them.
From his brother's letter, He Qiaoru learned that his brother's life was not rich and he would not be able to return to his hometown in a short time.
So she saved and saved, and exchanged 1,000 Hong Kong dollars. She planned to take it to Hong Kong and send it to her brother when Mr. Feng returned to Zhaoqing to make up for his travel expenses home.
However, God’s will brings trouble.
In 1989, before He Qiaoru’s travel expenses were sent, he received a letter from Taiwan. Inside the letter was the sad news that his brother had passed away due to illness. He Qiaoru seemed to have had his energy drained out of him, and he was depressed all day long.
She wrote back and asked her nephews to keep in touch and come home to see them if they have the chance. However, before waiting for a reply, Mr. Feng from Hong Kong also died of illness.
The family relationship that was finally restored was interrupted again.
only left three letters home and one photo, which brought He Qiaoru infinite thoughts.
reunites with
. Time has passed, and another 30 years have passed.
He Cannan's eldest son He Jiaxiang is 63 years old. He has always felt guilty that he did not try his best to fulfill his father's last wish. Now his aunt has also moved and she can't be found.
How will he face his father when he returns to his old age?
The uncle's depression was noticed by his niece He Yongzhi (Nana).
He Yongzhi recalled that when she was in elementary school, the school had to fill in her household registration information. She was a Taiwanese born and raised in Guangdong. She was curious and only found out the story behind it after asking her uncle.
It turns out that grandpa was afraid that they would forget their roots, so he deliberately filled in his place of birth as Guangdong.
But when her grandfather passed away, He Yongzhi was only 2 years old, and her memory of her grandfather was already very vague. After listening to her grandfather's story, He Yongzhi had a longing for the motherland.
When she grew up, she even liked to walk around the land of the motherland. She had been to many places, but because she was timid about being close to home, she did not dare to go to Guangdong.
This time, in order to reassure her uncle and fulfill her grandfather's last wish, He Yongzhi, who had been missing for two generations, began to search for his relatives.
However, how to find people in such a huge crowd?
One day, He Yongzhi noticed that Toutiao had a column to help people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait find people, so she decisively approached the project leader for help.
The head of the Toutiao project started pushing missing person information to Duanzhou District, Zhaoqing based on the address in the letter, and contacted the local police to help with the search.
However, the police searched the name "He Qiaoru" in the system, but found no such person.
The experienced policeman thought for a moment and directly searched for the word "He Qiao". At this time, the system popped up the message "He Qiaoer".
Her general information is similar to that described by He Yongzhi, and the pronunciation of "ru" and "er" in Cantonese are similar. The probability that she is "He Qiaoru" is very high.
However, her household registration has been cancelled.
The police found the information of He Qiaoer's children through the genealogy system, and confirmed from He Qiaoer's youngest son that they had an uncle in Taiwan.
He Qiaoer has four children, although they have never met their uncle from afar.
However, they had seen their mother cry so heartbroken over the death of her uncle that she would lock herself in her room all day long and stare blankly at her hometown across the river. Before
passed away, she earnestly asked her children to find their relatives in Taiwan.
He Qiaoer said that she is a married woman and her second brother has no children. The only one who can inherit the incense of the He family is the eldest brother He Cannan, so his descendants must be good and not let the He family lose its roots.
However, it is not easy to find someone after decades of separation and across the strait?
Unexpectedly, their relatives in Taiwan took the initiative to find them and wanted to go home to see them, which made them very excited!
In June 2019, He Yongzhi took He Jiaxiang and his wife to Guangzhou Baiyun Airport , while her cousins in Zhaoqing were waiting in the departure hall early.
He Yongzhi saw her relatives holding pick-up signs in the distance, walked quickly forward, and hugged her cousin warmly.
Although they have never met, they are connected by blood, making them feel familiar with each other.
Cousin took them to Gaoyao's hometown. He Jiaxiang looked at the big banyan tree his father once described and burst into tears:
html After 470 years, his father can finally take a look at his hometown again.
Due to He Jiaxiang's inconvenient legs and feet, he could only ask his wife to go up the mountain for him to pay homage to his aunt. He wanted to tell his aunt that the descendants of the He family whom she missed were now visiting her.
The longing between the two old people spanning half a century will be continued by their blood relatives!
However, not all Taiwanese veterans are as lucky as He Cannan.
Many veterans were unable to return home during their lifetime. After their death, they became a box of ashes, looking in the direction of their hometown.
Guide
After hearing the stories of Taiwanese veterans, Taiwanese compatriot Liu Dewen volunteered to become a guide for Taiwanese veterans.
From 2003 to the present, Liu Dewen has traveled to both sides of the Taiwan Strait many times and has brought home the ashes of more than 200 veterans.
In order to find more deceased veterans, Liu Dewen also visited mass graves.
In the overgrown cemetery, he took photos of tombstones one after another and compiled them into a book. The book contained information on at least 6,000 veterans.
With the help of his wife and daughter, he uploaded the information online and helped many mainland compatriots find their relatives.
Liu Dewen's parents are also very kind and funded him 500,000 yuan, so that he can continue this selfless road of finding relatives without distraction.
With the full support of his family, Liu Dewen traveled to many provinces in the motherland.
He once fell into a grave in search of ashes and broke his ribs. He also once walked five kilometers carrying an urn weighing ten kilograms.
He was also very tired, but he was happy to think that he could fulfill the dreams of the veterans.
As the saying goes: A tree is a thousand feet tall, but its leaves fall back to their roots. The same is true for
people. No matter how far we go, we will eventually go home, because home is our root!
And Taiwan is not an isolated island, its roots are in the mainland.
The two sides of the Taiwan Strait have been one family since ancient times, and their return is inevitable.
Now, the bell has sounded to go home, are you ready?
Reference material:
Headline search "Descendants of veterans from Guangdong who went to Taiwan are searching for roots and relatives, hoping to realize the long-cherished wish of three generations of grandparents"
Xinhuanet "Descendants of veterans from Taiwan are searching for relatives" Returning to the Mainland Family"
CCTV International "Taiwan Veterans - Returning Home"
Jimu News "Connected to Taiwan's "Soul Ferryman" Liu Dewen: Carrying the ashes of more than 200 veterans back to the mainland in 2019"
-END-
Author: Baishu
Editor: Shengcao
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