Recently, I received an unexpected WeChat friend request from a 21-year-old young man in Taiwan, who introduced himself as my grandfather’s brother’s grandson. As a 37-year-old immigrant from mainland China now living in Canada, this sudden connection stirred deep emotions within me. Two branches of the same family tree, separated by historical choices, had taken dramatically different paths. While he reached out to inquire about immigration to Canada, this connection itself prompted me to reflect on our family’s story.

A Historical Crossroads

In 1949, my grandfather and his brother faced a life-changing decision. My grandfather chose to join the Chinese Communist Party and remained with the army on the mainland, while his brother went to Taiwan. The brothers never saw each other again. Their choices, made during wartime, split our family across the Taiwan Strait, leading two bloodlines down vastly different paths.

Seven decades later, we, their descendants, live completely different lives. I’m in Canada, he’s in Taiwan. This young relative, whom I’ve never met, found me to ask about immigration. This connection across time and space feels like a kind of reconciliation with that historical separation. When he invited me to visit Taiwan, I felt a flutter of anticipation – perhaps this could be an opportunity to reconnect our family ties.

A “Temporary” Divorce During the Cultural Revolution

My grandfather, who had become a senior cadre in the new China, couldn’t escape the persecution during the Cultural Revolution. He proposed a “temporary” divorce from my grandmother, claiming it was to avoid political attacks. My grandmother took my father and aunt back to their rural hometown in Henan province, while he remained with the army.

However, when the Cultural Revolution ended, my grandfather didn’t return to his original family. He settled in Hunan province’s Hengyang city, where he became a section chief in the municipal grain bureau’s propaganda department, and started a new family. When my grandmother learned of this, she died of heartbreak in her rural home.

Reading my grandfather’s letters to my grandmother now, and understanding the historical context better, I’ve gained a different perspective. Perhaps the political pressure wasn’t severe enough to necessitate a divorce, even though my grandmother had some landlord family background. The “political pressure” seems more like an excuse for my grandfather to leave behind a rural wife he felt no longer matched his new social status.

Yet I don’t wish to judge his choices harshly. In that peculiar era, everyone had their weaknesses and selfish desires. My grandfather’s decisions reflected both the complexities of the time and the multifaceted nature of human character. His later actions – bringing his children to the city but restricting their visits to their rural mother – perhaps reflected his own guilt and avoidance.

The Urban-Rural Divide

After establishing himself in Hengyang, my grandfather used his connections in the grain system to transfer both my father and aunt to urban work units. This decision changed their life trajectories but also brought new conflicts. When my father frequently returned to the village to visit his sick mother, my grandfather objected. To him, these visits were “embarrassing,” as if they were reminders of a past he wanted to forget. In the end, my father couldn’t even be present at his mother’s death, a regret he carries to this day.

My aunt’s memories of rural life are particularly bitter. She once said, “If anyone tries to make me live that rural life again, I’ll kill them.” This extreme statement reflects both the hardships of rural life in that era and the psychological trauma caused by the urban-rural divide.

This experience shaped my father and aunt’s personalities in contrasting ways: my father became cautious, honest but reserved, internalizing the hardships; while my aunt remained bitter about that period, seemingly always fighting against the past. Interestingly, despite her own life challenges – divorced and estranged from her children – she often shows a subtle disdain for my father, as if rejecting his personality choices validates her own life attitudes.

A New Generation’s Beginning

After arriving in Hengyang, my father met my mother, who worked in a leather goods factory, through an introduction. Their first child, born in 1985, lived for only a week, devastating the young couple. Two years later, in 1987, I was born.

In the early 1990s, amid the wave of state-owned enterprise reforms, both my parents lost their jobs. This marked a difficult transition: my mother had to go to Shenzhen to work in a garment factory, while my father went to Hainan to learn to be a chef, though he eventually returned to work in a grain warehouse. I was in elementary school then, often returning to an empty home at lunch, sometimes relying on neighbors’ occasional kindness for meals.

Strangely, I don’t have many memories of financial hardship from that materially scarce time. This is probably thanks to my parents’ careful protection, shouldering all the burdens themselves. Looking back, those days of returning to an empty home, hungry and waiting for neighbors’ charity, must have left deep marks on my psyche, though they were overshadowed by other happy childhood memories.

Dreams from a Bicycle Seat

My warmest and most vivid childhood memories are of my father taking me on bicycle rides. Despite our modest means, he would make time to cycle dozens of kilometers with me, exploring every corner of Hengyang. From the back seat of his bicycle, we would traverse country roads, visit the old abandoned airport, and wait by the railway tracks to watch trains thunder past.

It was then that I first understood the concept of “distance” and “elsewhere.” Interestingly, my typically cautious father showed remarkable openness and courage in these explorations. Perhaps in his heart, he hoped I would develop a broader perspective and not be confined to one place. Looking back, these experiences likely planted the seeds of my later love for world travel. The little boy who once gazed at the sky from a bicycle’s back seat now flies among the clouds.

Historical Echoes

Our family’s story mirrors modern Chinese history in miniature. From the separation during the Civil War in 1949, through the family breakdown during the Cultural Revolution, to the urbanization process after Reform and Opening Up, each historical moment profoundly influenced our family’s destiny. The choices of my grandfather and his brother created two distinctly different family branches, our parents’ generation’s struggles gave us new possibilities, and now, as I receive messages from my Taiwanese cousin while in Canada, it feels like fate that a family separated by history is reconnecting through a new generation.

This story teaches us that history is never simply about right and wrong. Everyone struggles to survive within the currents of their time, making their own choices. We need not judge our ancestors’ decisions, but we should remember these experiences because they’ve shaped who we are today. Most importantly, despite all the twists and turns, life continues forward, writing new chapters with hope.

Now, as I communicate with my previously unknown cousin in Taiwan, I feel a remarkable interweaving of destinies. His aspirations for immigration somehow continue our family’s tradition of seeking new possibilities. Perhaps this is life’s charm: in the long river of time, we’re always searching for our own direction, and sometimes, this search helps us reconnect ties that history once scattered.