A mini-diaspora

How come Li Yapeng was born in Xinjiang, the wild west of China?

Long story: His grandpa was a Kuomintang man. And in 1949, when the Kuomintang was losing the mainland to the communists, he went from Nanjing to Guangzhou, ahead of his wife and two daughters, with every plan to go back for them as soon as he set everything up. But the Kuomintang lost Nanjing and he was cut off from his girls. And he swam with the tide of the Kuomintang retreat, to Taiwan. His wife was as good as widowed. No, worse. She was a Kuomintang wife in Red China; she and her daughters were pariahs politically; and so the elder girl went into her own exile, taking off for Xinjiang, where she would wed and bear two sons, Yawei and Yapeng.

The boys’ grandpa did go home to their grandma. He flew in from Hong Kong in 1988, when cross-strait relations were warmer than ever. She even went to Taiwan with him and they had one more go at their marriage. After a couple years, however, she moved back to the mainland. It was not to be. She died and he ended up emigrating to the States.

Mr Li and his Mrs Li – née Faye Wong – have been in the States with their baby Yan and he blogs about how he has been getting to know his 92-year-old grandpa. Once Mr Li asked his grandpa whose side he would take now, the Kuomintang or the communists’. His grandpa said, “Doesn’t matter. Next week I have to go sing The Star-Spangled Banner. I’m now an American citizen.”

He hopes, however, to be buried in his homeland. (Li Yapeng’s Blog)