Separation

Yilu Li 

ESL 100 

November 5, 2023 

Separation 

I think not many people have thought about how China has made it to the successful it is today. China used to have two political parties, the Communist party and the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang had great power and support from the bourgeoisie in China at that time. During World War II, the Communist Party was dissatisfied with the Kuomintang's negative attitude towards Japanese invaders, which led to many frictions. They engaged in two wars, and it lasted for fourteen years. In 1949, the Communist party achieved victory and brought an end to China’s civil war. After that most of the Kuomintang’s members fled to Taiwan, and few of them escaped to Hong Kong and eventually went overseas. At the same time, the Communist party implemented extensive land reform. This policy resulted in the death of many landlords, but some landlords chose to flee the Chinese mainland. The war between these two parties had many effects on Chinese people and my family, even after the war ended. 

My grandmother lost her closest family member, her sister, after the war ended. After the Kuomintang was defeated in China, most of the Kuomintang’s members left the Chinese mainland. At that time, my grandmother’s sister was a lawyer for the Kuomintang. Kuomintang’s members were afraid of being executed by the Communist party. My grandmother’s sister also felt that way, so she decided to leave Chinese mainland. They lost contact with each other after her sister left. The last thing my grandmother knew about her sister was that she fled overseas. After that, my grandmother never mentioned her sister again, and I did not know my grandmother had another sister until my father told me about my grandmother’s family’s story. In my grandmother's view, on a normal day after she went out and returned home, she found out that her sister had left without saying goodbye. My grandmother did not know this was just the beginning of missing her sister. 

My grandmother felt hopeless and desperate during that time because the rest of her siblings had left her behind. She was the only person in her family who stayed in China. My grandmother’s family was a rich landlord family. After the victory of the war, the Communist party implemented extensive land reform. They took all the private land and divided it equally to the citizens. At the same time, many landlords died under this policy because they opposed it. My grandmother's siblings realized that the seriousness of the policy, so they sold the family’s property and fled to Canada. Her siblings took most of the money and only left a little for her. In the blink of an eye, my grandmother went from a wealthy life to an ordinary poor family. My grandmother lost all the support of her family and the affluent life. This was a big change in her life. 

All of these events had a significant impact on my grandmother’s life. She went through many things, but she never gave up. My grandmother still had hope for life. A few years after, my grandmother married my grandfather. After they had their first child, my grandmother learned how to move on, and she had to learn to be a wife and a mother for the family. Even the separation of my grandmother’s siblings made her depressed. She still believed that one day they would meet again, one day soon. Eleven years ago, my grandmother’s brother came back once, and they had a pleasant meeting. After that, they separated again. I think that the part that upset her the most in the rest of her life was that she and her other siblings never had a chance to get to see each other again. 

Family harmony and unity are the traditional concepts of Chinese society, and my grandmother was a traditional woman. Family used to be everything to her. Even though her family background had brought her suffering, she never ever complained about it. On the contrary, my grandmother had learned a lesson from it. She told me that the suffering of life does not happen all at once, but slowly until you cannot breathe. One thing that you can do during this situation is maintain an optimistic attitude and continue living because things will always get better.