The Review 2009

50 The Review 2009 • Community Healing the Rift Across the Strait One of the most influential writers and cultural critics in the Chinese-speaking world is Professor Lung Yingtai. For nearly 20 years she has carried in her heart the seeds of a book that could help to bridge understanding across the Strait that divides the Chinese Mainland and Taiwan. At HKU she found the space and time to complete her work. The book, Big River, Big Sea – Untold Stories of 1949 , relates stories of Chinese families caught up in the upheavals of 1949. The people range from the famous, such as Taiwanese president Ma Ying-Jeou, to the not- so-famous, such as an 89-year-old man held prisoner by the Japanese who waited all these years to tell of his experiences. Professor Lung’s family also appears. Her father had been an officer in the Kuomintang military police and her parents fled China in 1949. On the day of departure her older brother, then aged one, was crying, so her mother decided to leave him behind with her mother-in-law thinking their absence would be temporary. She did not see him again for 38 years. “Chinese people on both sides of the Strait tend to see history from their own national perspectives,” Professor Lung said. “There have been so many injustices and during these 60 years no one has said ‘sorry’. There were so many debts that have not been cleared, so many acts of kindness that have not been repaid and so many wounds that have not healed. “If peace is so important, we must know the hurt of the other side. If people on each side do not know the other, then there is no basis for friendship. It cannot only be peace between political leaders.” The inspiration for the book came when Professor Lung witnessed the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. Like China, Germany had seen families torn apart and she realised that many of the people who had lived through 1949 would soon be gone. She began to research her book but was interrupted by many other demands, such as heading Taipei’s Cultural Bureau for three and a half years and joining HKU as Adjunct Professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre. Then in 2008 she received the Hung Leung Hau Ling Distinguished Fellow in Humanities. This provided financial support for a full year and a room at Robert Black College to focus only on writing Big River, Big Sea. Apart from China’s agonies, the book also chronicles the ordeals of families caught in conflicts in the West and includes letters written by Professor Lung’s German mother-in-law’s first husband before he died in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. “If peace is so important, we must know the hurt of the other side” 51 The Review 2009 • Community Professor Lung Yingtai