Jie Yongmao's journey home took a full 67 years.
After becoming a soldier in a daze, Jie Yongmao stayed away from his hometown. For many years, he had never thought about whether he could come back.
never gave up looking for his father
Jie Xiaolan is Jie Yongmao's daughter. She felt very distressed in many days before 2013.
In her memory, when her father left the mainland, she had only been a few months old. She had never seen her father in her childhood. All the memories of family came from her mother.
According to his mother, Jie Yongmao was born in 1904. Later, he was arrested by the Kuomintang and forced to go to Jiangxi. It was during that period that Jie Yongmao met his wife.
In 1948, Jie Yongmao sent a letter to his family. At that time, he had little contact with his family, but if he had the chance, his wife thought Jie Yongmao would definitely send a letter to his family.
However, until 1949, Jie Yongmao sent another letter. According to what he said, he had to go out for a long time and would come back when his wife was in confinement. But no one expected that such a separation would become a farewell.
The Jie family has three sisters. Compared to Jie Xiaolan, who has no impression of her father, Jie Guilan is different. She still has a deep memory of her father.
Jie Guilan lived with her father until she was 8 years old, while her second sister Xiong Fenglan was only 2 years old at that time.
Jie Guilan said: "When my father went to Taiwan, my younger sister Jie Xiaolan was just born."
My father was very responsible for the family. In the impression of the family, if there were no special circumstances, Jie Yongmao would not have left it just now. Everyone also concluded that there was only one situation at that time: his father was taken away by force.
Jie Guilan recalled the story with her father and she would still have tears on her face. She said: "My father is an extremely enthusiastic person. He has a good reputation among the neighbors and villagers. He likes to help others very much. When he took me to Shenyang, he met a Shandong worker who carries manure. His father thought his life was not easy, so he invited him home and gave him a bag of flour." Jie Yongmao's wife also remembers a lot of things like this.
In her impression, her husband also helped those poor people many times. Once, he brought a beggar home and gave him the remaining food. He stood by himself and watched the other party eat voraciously. Such things often happened several times.
Although I have only been with my father for a few years, in Jie Guilan's impression, his father's words and deeds have always influenced the people in the family.
Once, Ms. Xie bought a hat for her husband and was about to go home. She happened to meet a retired master in the kitchen. She heard that the master had a cold because of illness. Xie Guilan didn't even think about it and gave the hat to the master. Sometimes, she met a master who gave gas and repaired water pipes. Xie Guilan would enthusiastically invite them to stay at home for dinner.
She always felt that if his father was still by his side, he would definitely support himself in doing this.
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, especially Jie Xiaolan, has never had any intersection with her father in her life.
Faced with the reporter who came to interview, she choked and said, "I have never received fatherly love since I was a child. When I was a child, when others talked about my father, I always shed tears secretly. It has been more than 60 years since now, but the pain of fatherly love is always deep in my heart. I often wonder what kind of person my father is?"
When Jie Xiaolan gradually grew up, she hoped to find her father's traces through various ways, but because her father left no clues and did not say where to go, the endings he sought after many times was gone were all in vain.
At first, she also asked her mother because all the possibilities were concentrated on her mother.
Mother said: "Your father's hometown is near Linyi, Shandong. There is a brother at home named Jie Yongsheng. There are not many clues about other things."
After searching by the local police station, the Tancheng County Public Security Bureau finally confirmed some useful information.
The key character is called Jie Pengkuan.
Xie Pengkuan lives in Gaoji. At first, it was called Li Jiaji. In 1948, Xie Pengkuan was only 18 years old. He still remembers the past.
He said: "Xie Yongmao is my uncle. In 1948, he sent two letters, which also mentioned that he missed his family very much and had two daughters. Other things, because the years and months have been too long, I can't remember them."
However, Xie Pengkuan was able to restore the original scene of the Jie family.
His father was Jie Yongsheng mentioned by the three sisters of the Jie family. There were 6 brothers and sisters in Jie Yongmao's generation. They fled from their hometown of Yishui to Tancheng . At that time, the family's conditions were very difficult, and basically they had no meals. In order to make a living, the brothers had to go their separate ways.
Among them, Xie Pengkuan's uncle Jie Yongmao went to work in a landlord's house in another place, and was forced to become a soldier.
But except for letters, he never saw his uncle again, nor did he know his uncle's specific situation. It was not until someone from the Public Security Bureau came that he learned that his uncle's family was still looking for him.
The mother of the Jie family sisters once said: "Your father has a dream, which is to go back to his hometown to take a look."
During the reform and opening up, Jie Xiaolan's investigation finally made actual progress. A distant relative told her: "Your father followed the Kuomintang army to Chiayi, Taiwan after leaving home. He may have passed away long ago."
Jie Xiaolan wanted to follow this clue to continue the investigation, but the relative who revealed the news was old. After he passed away, Jie Xiaolan's investigation again cut off the clues.
However, Jie Xiaolan did not give up, and her behavior gradually attracted the attention of the media. She once said to the media: "Finding a father is my lifelong wish. As long as there is hope, I will definitely find it. Otherwise, my life will be in vain."
embarked on a long journey
Because Xie Yongmao left too little information, Jie Xiaolan really doesn't know where to start.
Until she became an old man in her 60s, and gradually developed the complex of "fallen leaves return to their roots". At this time, she felt even more: her father must have the same idea, and letting his father return home was her dream.
On November 9, 2013, she finally boarded a plane to Taiwan. That time, she followed a tour group.
This time, her mood was particularly heavy for her. She knew that her father was still alive, but no matter what, she also thought about taking her father's ashes back to her hometown.
When the tour group arrived in Chiayi, Taiwan, she felt for the first time that her father was so close to her. However, in the huge Chiayi, where would her father be?
She came to Alishan alone. Standing on the top of the mountain, Jie Xiaolan could no longer hold back her tears. She cried and shouted, "Dad, my daughter is here to see you! Dad, where are you?"
She also said bluntly: "I came to Taiwan just to find my father. The rest of the matter has nothing to do with me. When others were going to play, I went to the front desk of the hotel to come back to a phone book and began to carefully check the whereabouts of my father."
Because my mother had my father's troops and numbers, the string of numbers had long been kept in mind by Jie Xiaolan.
Later, the tour group went to Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung . Jie Xiaolan never missed the scenery on the roadside, and she was interested in only two places, namely hotels and telephone booths.
This time I went to Taiwan for a total of 8 days, and Xie Xiaolan also emptied 8 phone cards.
Finally, something that made her very happy happened.
When the tour group had just arrived in Taipei, the phone number of the Chiayi Reserve Command was opened, and the other party also gave an answer: "There is indeed this person, but you need to provide proof of your relationship with him."
finally had a result, and Xie Xiaolan flew back to Nanchang before he even finished his trip.
There, she began to run around looking for various materials, and finally found the information about her mother in the public security department.
What made her even more ecstatic was that in the column of her mother's notes, she also saw some introductions related to her father. This was the first time she had seen her father's text messages seriously in more than 60 years. In the days that followed, she tirelessly checked her household registration, checked her files, went to the notary office to notarize, etc.
took a long time and she finally found all the materials about her father.
In October 2014, after preparing all the materials, Jie Xiaolan finally found out that his father's ashes were stored in the Bird Pine Garden of the Zhongling Temple of Kaohsiung City.
On October 22, Xie Xiaolan and her lover rushed to Taiwan and found her father's urn here.
Unfortunately, there is no photo of her father on the urn, only her father's name, age, position and number, and she still hasn't seen her father's appearance.
On October 25, Xie Xiaolan and her lover took a train to the place where her father had lived for 8 years: the military village in Chiayi, Taiwan.
There, they inquired around and found some friends of his father Jie Yongmao during his lifetime.
Jie Xiaolan said: "Where, many old people still remember their father's past, although his father passed away in 1957, which has been more than half a century since then."
Jie's sisters can only imagine their father's appearance in the past through the descriptions of the elderly.
From their description, after going to Taiwan, my father still maintained a spirit of helping others, so he had a good popularity, which left such a deep impression on others.
After completing all the follow-up procedures, on November 5, Xie Xiaolan returned to the airport in Nanchang with her father's ashes.
She said: "For more than 60 years, I have been looking forward to this moment, that is, to return my father's soul to his hometown."
On the way back, Jie Xiaolan remembered what his mother once said: "Your father had always had a wish before his death, that is, to go back to his hometown to take a look."
Jie Xiaolan and his sisters discussed and decided unanimously: Since the old man's ashes were found, he still wanted to help him fulfill such a wish.
November 19 at 11:00 a.m. on November 19, at the entrance of Gaoji Village, Chongfang Town, Tancheng County, Linyi City, Jie Xiaolan and her sisters appeared with their father's ashes.
The police and the media also accompanied the whole process. After everyone saw an old man with a crutch at the entrance of the village, the local police immediately introduced: "This is Jie Pengkuan, your cousin."
Although he had never met relatives from afar, when they met, the elderly quickly hugged each other and couldn't stop crying.
80 years ago, Jie Yongmao was arrested as a strong man, and after that, everyone got together and left many people. In his dream hometown, Jie Yongmao has not come back for almost 70 years.
That year, the eldest sister of the three sisters of the Jie family was 74 years old, and the second sister Xiong Fenglan, who had just had an otitis media surgery, needed to rest, but she still chose to set foot on her way back to her hometown.
And their children all rushed over from all over the country.
At the entrance of the village, the villagers around were moved to tears after hearing the story of learning about home.
On this day, Xie Pengkuan's home was full of people, and they seemed to have endless words.
The three sisters asked the children to take out gifts to their relatives in their hometown, and they also put on new clothes for their cousin and cousin's sister-in-law.
The food on the table was full of food. The reunion of relatives also allowed the old man Jie Yongmao, who had passed away for more than half a century, to realize his wish.
Jie Pengkuan was in his 80s in 2014. Looking at his uncle's urn, he kept muttering: "Just find it! Just find it!"
After dinner, the three sisters of the Jie family also opened the genealogy and looked through the relationship between the characters in the family. For them, with such a certificate, they also had "roots".
After learning that his father was buried in Taiwan, it took more than a year for the sisters of the Jie family to finally get his father back to his hometown. It was full of hard work, hardship and sweat. The three sisters finally put a perfect end to this matter with their persistence.
Finally, considering that their age was getting older and their mobility was inconvenient, the three sisters of the Jie family decided to bury their father in Nanchang and place their mother's ashes together.
On the Qingming Festival in 2022, the three sisters of the Jie family gathered in front of their father's grave again.
The three sisters are at least 80 years old, but they still insist on visiting their father's grave every Qingming Festival. The eldest sister repeatedly told the two sisters: "My father was a very good person when he was alive. His life was full of forced and he had no choice. If he was still there, the three sisters would definitely feel the strong father's love."
Even if he didn't have much impression of this father, Jie Xiaolan still felt that as long as the father's blood flowed in her body, she should be responsible for a daughter. Looking back on the difficult year of searching for relatives, fortunately, hard work will be rewarded.
For veteran Jie Yongmao, the journey to leave his hometown in 1967 was finally completely over after his daughter went to Taiwan to find her ashes. The scene of the Jie sisters' recognizing their ancestors is very touching, and the friendship contained in it is only those who have experienced those chaotic years can empathize with it.
reference
Jie Weilan: My father is an enlightenment teacher. I went back to Linyi . I found the root in my hometown Qilu.com
Dad, we finally went home. Rural public
