As she mourned the passing of her father-in-law yesterday, Chen Yun-ing (陳雲英) shed tears of both grief for the departed and of pity for her husband and the division of loyalties that, she seemed to imply, had prompted him to defect to China.
Chen, the wife of defector Justin Lin (林毅夫), told reporters after the funeral, "I am a Taiwanese as well as a Fujianese. I love Taiwan as well as mainland China."
"Only my generation, currently around 40 years of age, could understand my feeling of rootlessness," she said. "Young people in Taiwan might not feel the same way I do."
PHOTO: YU MING-CHIN, TAIPEI TIMES
Chen, dressed in the traditional funerary sack cloth, paid her respects on bended knee during the funeral ceremony that preceded the elder Lin's burial yesterday morning, and wept as she did so.
She later told reporters that she regretted that her husband had been unable to attend the ceremony.
After the burial, Chen answered questions from reporters. She said, "The cross-strait political problems bothered me since I was little." She said that when she was in elementary school, her teacher asked her class to find out where their families were from. She and her father established that their ancestors were from China's Fujian Province and she came to regard herself as both Taiwanese and Fujianese.
Chen said she still appreciated the government's allowing her to return to Taiwan to attend her father-in-law's funeral.
In response to remarks by Minister of National Defense Tang Yao-ming (湯曜明), she said that individuals are entitled to their own positions but, "as minister of defense, Tang has no choice but to make remarks like that."
Tang condemned Lin as "an ungrateful man whose betrayal of the country is inexcusable," in the Legislative Yuan on Monday.
"I hope that now that there has been extensive discussion, the public will realize the truth, and absolve my husband of any wrongdoing," she said.
On the subject of compensation paid to Lin's family after he was listed as "missing" following his defection in 1979, Chen said that the family will return it to the military. But she stressed that she "took the money because the government asked me to do so."
Meanwhile, Justin Lin set up an altar in Beijing yesterday and paid his respects to his father at the same time as the rest of his family in Ilan County.
During an interview with a Taiwanese reporter in Beijing, he said that he regretted not being able to attend his father's funeral.
He added that he hoped the turmoil that he had caused in Taiwan would end with his father's funeral.
In response to criticism from his former colleagues and friends in Taiwan, he said. "This is my personal tragedy. It has nothing to do with treason."
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