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Family reunion now, re-united nation next

By Xiong Lei (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-23 07:29

At long last, my dream to visit Taiwan comes true.

Even if this is not the ideal season to travel to the island, as it might be plagued with typhoons and humid weather, I don't care. So long as I can see the treasured island with my own eyes, and so long as I can set foot on that land, I'll be satisfied.

I had longed to go to Taiwan for a visit for decades. But as so many odds were there against ordinary mainlanders going there, Taiwan, nominally an integral part of our country, seemed more difficult to reach than a foreign land.

I remember as a child in the 1950s I spotted the slogan along the street swearing, "We must liberate Taiwan!"

And from some popular folk songs at the time I learned that the island of Taiwan was a place of beauty, with numerous attractions such as Mt. Ali and Riyuetan.

However, the thinking of going to "our Taiwan" for sightseeing was a taboo, as it would be interpreted as a "motion to surrender to the enemy".

And those who had relatives in Taiwan would keep it secret, even to their own children. I, for one, never knew I had an uncle - my father's younger brother - in Taiwan until the early 1970s.

Such an overseas relationship could mar or jeopardize one's professional career and political life. I was turned down by a prestigious institution of higher learning just because of my uncle, even though I didn't know of his existence.

That abnormality was an outcome of civil wars between belligerent parties and forces, and it looks absurd in retrospective.

The knowledge of having relatives in Taiwan made me even more curious about the island, and drew me closer to it. I was eager not only to see Taiwan but also to know my uncle and cousins.

My uncle was a filial son, as my cousins in Taiwan told me years later. Although his brotherhood with some communists on the mainland affected his career as well, he would not tolerate any negative remarks of any member of our clan across the Taiwan Straits. He had missed his parents and siblings on the mainland ever since he left for Taiwan in 1948.

Yet he was unable to pay the last respects to either of them when my grandpa died in 1952 and my grandma in 1972. Such a visit was forbidden on either side of the Straits. And there was no communication between Taiwan and the mainland.

A stride forward was witnessed in the late 1980s when the Taiwan authorities dropped the ban on people of Taiwan to visit the mainland and the mainland began to open to Taiwan.

But there remained limits, since the island was not equally open to the mainlanders. And to add trouble to the uneasy communication, there were no direct flights to and from Taiwan - visitors across the Straits had to go to a third place first, be it Hong Kong, Macao or Seoul, before they could land in the mainland or Taiwan.

This prolonged the journey from a few hours to a whole day, and could be exhausting. My uncle, by then wheel-chair bound, made several attempts to come over but gave up all at the last minute, as he was too fragile to endure the ordeal of a long journey.

Until he passed away in 1998 my uncle did not realize his dream of a home visit. By then I had communicated with him for seven years and as it looked harder for a mainlander to go to Taiwan than fly to the moon, I could not visit him. It became a lifetime regret of mine that I never saw my uncle and he could not return home for a visit for five decades, till his death.

Such a tragedy is not unique to my family. I dare say thousands of compatriots across the Straits share the same sorrow.

If my uncle in the heaven knew non-stop flights between Taiwan and the mainland are now available, albeit on weekends and chartered ones only for the time being, I bet he would be overjoyed. So would be my own late parents, who used to care and treasure this younger brother of theirs.

There are political forces inside and outside the island working to cede Taiwan from China. But my own family story has convinced me that blood is always thicker than water. Despite the fact that my father and uncle clung to differing political faiths and parties, despite the abnormal political atmosphere separating my family for decades, I never felt alien to my Taiwan cousins when they came on academic exchanges or tours. We have been akin to each other ever since we first could communicate in the late 1980s.

And the feeling is not exclusive to my family members. Among my best Taiwan friends is the daughter of a former Kuomintang air force officer, who was killed by the air force of the Communist-led People's Liberation Army on an espionage mission to the mainland in 1959.

While her father had to intrude stealthily, my friend and her family are now on visits to the mainland open and above board. Her son is even taking a graduate program in Peking University.

Now after years of waiting, I finally could return my Taiwan folks and friends a visit. This is a new stride forward.

We have turned over a heavy page of history and started a new one. That is the hope of our nation. Indeed there are still many differences between people across the Taiwan Straits, but we share much in common. We speak the same language, and we treasure the same cultural roots. We all desire for the prosperity of the Chinese nation.

That is because we belong to one family after all and the blood ties are always there. However bitter our past disputes could be, which were worsened and abused by some external forces, the desire for the reunification of our nation is strong.

It is true there is a long way to go to achieve that goal. But unremitting efforts from both sides of the Straits have brought us closer and closer, and the day will come when our nation is reunified.

The author is a council member of China Society for Human Rights Studies

(China Daily 07/23/2008 page8)