As a child, Veterans Affairs Com-mission official Chang Chan-kuei (
As Chang grew older, however, he gradually became aware of the sadness and pain afflicting his parents -- a misery that reached a crescendo every Lunar New Year because of what the holiday symbolized to them: a separated family.
"We didn't know at first," Chang said yesterday at a ceremony marking 20 years of cross-strait family reunions. "My parents lived short lives; they didn't make it to the time when families on either side of the Strait could meet again."
Chang was joined yesterday by scores of long-retired Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) soldiers and other Mainlanders or waishengren (外省人) -- a term referring to immigrants who followed the KMT army from China to Taiwan after World War II -- to celebrate the two-decade anniversary of a movement that allowed families like his to reunite.
Countless Chinese families who retreated with the KMT to Taiwan in 1949 following a civil war with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were cut off from family members and friends in China until 1987, when Taiwan began to permit them to return, participants said.
Fed up with restrictions preventing them from seeing family in China, retired KMT soldiers took to the streets for months in 1987 before the restrictions were lifted in April that year, said National Taiwan University professor Wang Hsiao-po (
Fearing retribution from the government, the former soldiers preferred to fan out in cities nationwide in groups of just three or four to hand out pamphlets, sing songs and otherwise spread their message, Wang said.
Fan Hsun-yuan (范巽緣), a former vice minister of education who called herself "a first-generation Taiwanese and a second-generation Mainlander," yesterday said the movement began on May 10, 1987.
Mainlanders who had taken part in the movement were out in force at the event, wearing shirts that read: "We Miss Home!" and waving pickets from 1987 that read: "You forced me to become your soldier, now let me go home!"
The signs refer to what Wang said was the KMT's common practice of "shanghaiing" young men in China and forcing them to fight on its behalf during the civil war.
The original proponents of the movement, mostly elderly men with combat experience, received plaques and awards for their contribution to cross-strait relations yesterday.
Hosted by the Association of Mainlander Taiwanese, the event also called attention to respecting the rights of both Mainlanders and benshengren (
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS