Wherever there is seawater, there are Chinese people." This is a phrase that is often on our lips.
When we say it, should we feel proud or saddened? Why have Chinese people been set adrift in foreign lands? The Chinese are a people that highly value their homeland. In Chinese culture, one almost never hears of such a thing as the vagabond life, but it can't be denied that because of war, political struggle, poverty and hunger, many, many Chinese have bid farewell to their motherland. This kind of utter deprivation is bewildering indeed.
Rucksacks on our backs, my husband and I went on a journey to Thailand's Mae Salong, to search out the footprints of some Chinese people that wandered astray in northern Thailand. Mae Salong was once a place where renegade soldiers made their homes. At the time, General Tuan Hsi-wen was in command, and as he led the remnants of the KMT army in their fight against the communist regime, he made Mae Salong his base. Like falling leaves, the remnant soldiers floated for decades in Mae Salong, on the Thai-Burma border. They struggled for a place of peace where they and their descendants could set down roots.
General Tuan Hsi-wen was originally from Yiliang County in China's Yunnan Province. In 1961 he led a second major retreat across the Yunnan-Burma border. After entering Thailand, he always maintained the spirit of a lone soldier. During those years, he carried on a great struggle, but all in vain. In a letter he wrote to his assistant General Chu Hsin-yi, he described the pain in his heart: "The current situation is a far cry from before. The mountains and rivers are the same as always, but the affairs of humankind have completely changed. Sometimes I think of the words from the Song-dynasty poem: 'I sigh for the years that have passed from sight/ My glory remains unachieved/ I have grown old/ My opportunities passed/ Just as the general Li, if I met a great emperor/10,000 dukes could not compare.' I can't help but sigh. Our mountain village is in the midst of the rainy season. This time of year, it is shrouded in mist, in a great swath of silence, without the clamor of the city, without the intrigue of human affairs. Sitting in stillness, pondering what one has done, is also something to be treasured in life." Harried from within and without, General Tuan died of illness in Bangkok in 1980. His remains were returned to Mae Salong and interred on the top of a mountain at the edge of the village.
We took this journey to Mae Salong because of all the many legends that have come from this place. Mae Salong-the name itself seems like a poem. Perhaps I harbored too many dreams, believing that I could easily interview the descendents of the KMT remnants, and look over the relics from that era. But I was extremely disappointed. Each scene and each object that was described in Tseng Yen's The Story of Mae Salong seemed no longer to exist. No signs remained of the KMT forces in Mae Salong or any refugee groups. There was only an elderly man in the Mae Salong history gallery, who explained some extremely superficial anecdotes to the visitors, making his living from the donations of tourists. He even refused to let us take a single photograph.
Why were the isolated soldiers, who accepted their role in a bloody war and went into exile in a foreign land, unable finally to return home? Neither victory nor honor was theirs, and now they are abandoned in this remote hamlet. I too am Chinese, but because I live in a different place, my fate is as different from theirs as Heaven is from Earth. Regrettably, most visitors don't have the chance to deeply appreciate the pain-filled history of the KMT remnants. The simple, one-room soldier's history gallery only explains how the troops relinquished their weapons and began to cooperate with the Thai authorities, devoting their lives to the government of Thailand.
During this trip to Mae Salong, I did not see the ruin and poverty described by Tseng Yen. On the contrary, I saw many Yunnanese that had settled in Mae Salong to make a living. There they harvest tea leaves and sell them to visitors. Most of the tourists in Mae Salong are Taiwanese. Perhaps they, like me, come harboring a beautiful dream.
The Mae Salong of today is already quite prosperous and developed. Most people live in brick houses, and many own cars. Holiday houses have been erected everywhere, and Yunnanese restaurants are crowded together in rows. Many Taiwanese business persons have also come here to grow tea, harvesting a variety called "double green" that has become a local specialty, and selling it at high prices back in Taiwan. They have also built a holiday villa complex there. Maybe this commercialization wiped out the original feel of the place. An asphalt road travels all the way from the foot of the mountain to its top. The legendary Mae Salong of the early years, when only horse-drawn wagons and mules could reach the village, has disappeared.
In the wake of economic development and a flood of outsiders who have come in search of fortune, the poetic image of Mae Salong I held in my heart has, in the real world, been washed away without a trace. The archetypical borderland shantytown of Bo Yang's book The Alien Realm no longer exists. If the aged author had the chance to return, he would doubtlessly encounter astonishing changes.
When I said farewell to Mae Salong, the image of the 93rd Regiment stranded in northern Thailand lingered in my mind's eye. How these compatriots with their flesh-and-blood ties to China swore allegiance to the king of Thailand in exchange for a dwelling place, how Mae Salong's Hsinghua Middle School has faced great difficulties teaching the mother tongue of their ancestral land, how the writer Chang Hsiao-feng in days gone by traveled so far to meet the people of Mae Salong and with passion and love for her fellow countrymen, gave them many Chinese books-all these thoughts can only continue within my dream.
Perhaps one day I will once again walk upon the soil of Mae Salong in search of all these legends.
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Mae Salong is situated on a ridge amidst an unending row of mountains.
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These ethnic Chinese children can all speak fluent Mandarin.
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This lady, who immigrated from Yunnan to Mae Salong over 30 years ago, makes her living planting tea.
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The author's daughter poses for a picture with a young Akha girl from Mae Salong village (left).
These ethnic Chinese children can all speak fluent Mandarin.
This lady, who immigrated from Yunnan to Mae Salong over 30 years ago, makes her living planting tea.
The author's daughter poses for a picture with a young Akha girl from Mae Salong village （left）.
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