At noon, a grandson in the countryside will be married. It is not yet 8:00 am when the groom comes in a small sedan to pick up Grandma and Grandpa. The car heads out along country roads. A tractor pulling farm goods drives by, and the driver asks with curiosity, "Taiwan is very advanced, surely you don't use this type of vehicle there?" Old Wang is the first to reply: "There are still some." He sits discontented for a while and then declares: "I am from Zhoushan. I am not Taiwanese."

I know the way, but the way is gone

They had been driving for an hour, and passed through many villages. Still they couldn't find their destination. Grandfather Wang decides to get out of the car and walk. "I've been back in the old hometown for 12 years now, and I know the roads. I came this way 50 years ago." The 81-year-old Wang has a great memory. "I still remember clearly that I left Zhoushan on the 29th day of the 3rd month of the lunar calendar back in 1950. I had just finished planting the rice seedlings in the paddies."

But though Wang's memory may not be faulty, he still gets lost. "Elder sister, can you tell me how to get to Zhimashan?" He asks many people for directions along the way, and finally gets to his grandson's house. Wang explains that the problem isn't that he forgot the route, but that the route simply doesn't exist anymore. "Things have changed too much. That reservoir wasn't here before."

At rural weddings, the whole family comes early. Wang now has more than 20 grandsons and also has five great-grandsons. According to custom, everyone gathers in the main hall around a table with smoldering incense. The bride and groom first pay their respects to heaven and to their ancestors, and then toast each of their elders in turn with a cup of tea. The elders then return the gesture by presenting a gift of money wrapped in a red envelope. Adults and children circle round to hear the family elders deliver auspicious congratulatory expressions and to hear the master of ceremonies call out the amounts of the wedding gifts.

After Grandpa and Grandma Wang arrive, impressed family members begin to say things like, "Grandpa's from Taiwan--he probably put US dollars in his red envelope!" Although his envelope doesn't contain US dollars, he still comes through, as expected, with the largest gift at the wedding. "Back in Taiwan I had to give red envelopes to all the children of the guys who came from my hometown. Now I'm here and I have to give red envelopes to my grandchildren and grandnieces. . . it will never end." Though it seems like Wang is complaining, one can still detect in his eye a glint of pride at being the patriarch of his own clan.

Come back home with me

Family members at the wedding speak to each other in the heavily accented local Zhoushan dialect. Grandpa Wang says that these days he has to stop and think to speak Mandarin at all. Grandma Wang, meanwhile, sitting off to the side with other senior women in the family, uses mainly Mandarin, spiced up with some phrases of Zhoushan dialect or Taiwanese. She has to use every language she can, and constantly gesticulate with her hands, but she looks animated and happy. Eighty-three-year-old Grandma gets even more attention at the wedding than Grandpa Wang, because she is a true Taiwanese, born and bred. She is in fact the only Taiwanese woman to accompany a mainlander husband back to settle in his old home town--not only in Zhoushan, but anywhere where old mainlanders have returned after decades in Taiwan.

"When we first came back it was a real sensation. Some reporters even came to interview us," she recalls. She explains why she agreed to return to Zhoushan at a time (before the legalization of travel to mainland China from Taiwan) when it was necessary to cut all her links to Taiwan to do so: "I came back with him so he could fulfill his lifelong desire to return home. You don't know this old guy, but he missed his hometown and his children more than anyone." She adds, "He was very frugal in Taiwan, and wouldn't buy anything. If someone wanted to show him a house, he wouldn't even go to see it. All he ever wanted was to come home."

Relying on the next generation

The Wangs had only one daughter in Taiwan, and she was already married. Wang explained to his wife that his family always had a great deal of status in Zhoushan, and the children were always raised with discipline so that they showed great filial piety to their elders. Every morning daughters-in-law even had to bring water for the wash basins of their in-laws. In his old family home she would no longer have to be responsible for everything in the house, as she was in Taiwan. "The old man especially told me that I had to get along with the wives of his sons, because we would have to rely on his sons and their wives in the future," she says, explaining her husband's arguments urging her to accompany him to Zhoushan.

However, things were very different from what they had expected. On Chinese New Year in the first year of their return, Grandpa Wang urged the wife of his older son to make sticky rice cake, which represents good fortune. He also told her that they would have to make a 12-course dinner as an offering to their ancestors in order to fulfill their obligations properly. Little did they expect that she would lose her temper and beg off cooking the dinner on the excuse of having a headache. The Wangs ended up having a bowl of noodles. "We didn't even have a proper dinner our first New Year back," says Grandma Wang with a sigh.

Day-to-day meals turned out to be as unhappy as that first holiday dinner. Wang lived with his eldest son and was aware that the younger man didn't make much money. Therefore the elder Wangs paid for the food while the younger Wangs prepared it. But when word got out that the old folks were coughing up, the kids, grandchildren, great-grand-children--even the men repairing his grandson's roof--all dropped by at mealtimes, so that it was necessary to prepare food for 15 or 20 people at a time. Grandpa Wang knew that these meals would eat up his savings, so he had to call a halt and go back to the way things were in Taiwan--the two older Wangs preparing their food for themselves.

Shaking the money tree

What most disappointed Wang was that his sons and grandsons had developed a fondness for mahjongg and gambling, "and it's all my fault," says Wang. Way back in 1956, Wang asked a friend who worked on a ship to get in touch with his family. Wang had always felt very sorry for his eldest son because the eldest son's mother--Wang's first wife--had died early on. From his friend Wang found out that the son's stepmother--Wang's second wife--was now with someone else, making life even harder for his boy. Thus every year Wang sent money to his eldest son.

With money so easy to come by, his offspring grew up to be irresponsible. Little did his sons suspect that Wang had to work in a coal mine, to serve as a cook in a factory, and to often go without enough food himself to save up this money. Grandam Wang, in a tone of voice that clearly suggests the sacrifices weren't worthwhile, says, "The place we lived in Taiwan, we didn't fix it up in over 30 years. Once the old man got sick and I went out and planted vegetables and sold them in the market just to get by. We nearly starved ourselves we were so frugal."

Seeing as he never had a chance to teach his children anything, Wang rolled up his pants and went out into the fields himself, hoping his sons would come to their senses. But in the end the house was left dilapidated and the fields left barren, and they had to borrow New Year's cakes from the neighbors. "For the first three years, all my relatives, no matter what their age, surrounded me, thinking of nothing but how they could get their hands on my money." In the end the Wangs left their home in the countryside and moved themselves into the city where they live on their own.

"When I was in Taiwan not an hour went by that I didn't think of Zhoushan, but now there's no point in thinking about it. Anyway, when I die I'll be buried with my grandparents and parents. So I'm happy to be back in Zhoushan no matter what. This is still the happiest I have ever been in my life," says Grandpa Wang. His only worry is that if he dies first his wife will have to live alone in a place where she has no relatives. The only thing he can do is bequeath his savings to Grandma Wang, so that she won't have to worry about money. But Grandma Wang is philosophical: "There's no point in worrying about stuff like this. Anyway, we haven't many years left and we could be called back anytime."

Now the two go together to the marke to buy food every morning, eating whatever strikes their fancy. By the time they are finished washing up or doing this and that it's time for lunch. Then they take a nap and have a little stroll. Thus another day rolls tranquilly past.

[Picture Caption]

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In order that Mr. Wang could realize his dream of returning home, Mrs. Wang cut her links with Taiwan and followed him back to Zhoushan. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)