I was reading a book “My home is on the plareau”(我的家在高原上), written by a famous taiwanese female poet,席慕蓉. She is 67 years old now. Both of her parents was born and grew up in Mongolia. They were the socalled noble in the traditional Mongolia society. After 1949, her family couldn’t help but move to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek’s government. And they never came back home again.
Before 1989, almost all Taiwanese people were not allowed to go to Mainland China whether for travel, business…etc. Therefore, their eager to go home was restrained for a long time.
The poet was born in Si-Chuan Province and grew up in Hong Kong. That is, she had never saw the land where her parents once longered and rushed about on the horseback. For many years, she had tried in many ways to recall and write down the pieces of her parents’ memories and her own imagination about Mongolia.
Right after the ban was removed by president Chiang Ching-Kuo, the poet began her journey to Mongolia. It was only after the first time she stood on the Mongolia Plateau that she started her life which is truly linked with the land. The land with sky and grass land.
I think, I’ve always been easily moved by essays or movies about migrants caused by wars, political reasons, or any other tragedy. I guess that is definitely because my grand parents were exactly of the same kind of people as those migrants. During the civil war, they moved the entire family from one city to another, and never came back home. At last, the strait separated them form their hometown forever.
However, there was still something lucky in the tragic story. My grand parents went to Taiwan together(with my father’s oldest sister), safe and sound. And they are now buried side by side, on the hill Da-Du mountain in Taichung County. Luckily they didn’t lose each other during the war, while many families were.