(ECNS) -- In the documentary Returning Home, Taiwan veteran Gao Binghan travels from Taipei to the Chinese mainland to help Li Xiuyun, daughter of fellow veteran Li Cunxin, reclaim her father's ashes after a 30-year search.
The film, now showing across the mainland, explores the poignant journeys of Taiwan veterans returning to their ancestral homes, revealing deep emotional and historical ties across the Taiwan Strait.
In a recent exclusive interview with China News Service, director Yang Zhengnong recalled filming the scene, his hands trembling as he worked. He described the 70-year barrier of time and space as "a mountain heavy enough to crush a person."
Around 1949, some members of the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) party retreated to Taiwan, among them over 600,000 soldiers.
Yang said that as the years go by, this group is gradually shrinking. If no one captured their stories on film, the deep familial bonds spanning the Taiwan Strait and those unforgettable memories would eventually be lost. This inspired the making of Returning Home.
Yang combed through newspapers, historical records, and personal memoirs to understand the veterans' heart-wrenching journeys home. To build trust, he spent two years immersing himself in their lives, joining their family gatherings, recording birthdays and festivals, and accompanying them during Qingming tomb-sweeping rituals and homecoming visits.
Only by truly becoming part of their world would the elders be willing to open their hearts, he said.
In 1950, Jiang Sizhang, a young man from Zhoushan in East China's Zhejiang Province, was on his way home from school when he was forcibly conscripted by the 18th Division of the 19th Army of the KMT. He was later taken to Taiwan with the unit.
On New Year's Day in 1979, the Chinese mainland issued "the Message to Compatriots in Taiwan", calling for an end to long-standing separation and encouraging free travel between people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Soon after, Jiang made a roundabout journey via Hong Kong to visit his hometown of Zhoushan.
In the documentary, Jiang says he didn't even know if his parents were dead or alive. All he hoped for was the chance to return—either to serve them a cup of tea if they were still living, or to offer a stick of incense if they had passed. "Isn't that the most basic expression of human affection and moral obligation?" he asked.
In 2020, a young woman from southwest China's Guizhou Province followed an address left in an old letter from home by her granduncle and knocked on the door of a Liu family home in Taipei. She asked, "Is there anyone here with the surname Liu?"
"Are you originally from Zunyi, Guizhou?"a woman responded.
The woman who answered the door was overjoyed, said Yang. It turned out the girl from Guizhou was her grandniece, a relative she had never met before. At that very moment, a family bond that had been severed for over 20 years got reconnected.
The purpose of Returning Home isn't just to show past suffering, said Yang, but to let people feel the deep connection spanning the Taiwan Strait.
"The film has a warm tone—not just the tears of veterans, but also the light of finally returning home. Every long journey, in the end, leads to hope."
(By Gong Weiwei)
京公網(wǎng)安備 11010202009201號(hào)