May 1999

Li Nan Hua was 16 years old when she ran away from home to join the People’s Army in its fight against the Americans during the Korean conflict. China in the late 50s was a time full of hope, and Nan Hua embodied that spirit. Independent and proud, she looked forward to a life with dreams still to be fulfilled. At the front she met Jiang Xi Wan, a 17 year old soldier.

Convention and youth made it impossible for the close friendship to blossom into romance. The following year, Xi Wan was transferred. Nan Hua wrote a few times but each letter was met with stony silence. Even allowing for unreliable mail deliveries so common in those days, Nan Hua realized that, for whatever reasons, Xi Wan was not going to write back. After a year, she stopped sending her letters.

Some years later, Li Nan Hua met Wu Xing, a quiet boy. She married him in 1965. A son was born, to be followed by a daughter. Together the family weathered the tumultuous times that was China in the 60s and 70s. By the mid-80s, they had settled down to a routine of a quiet life. Then Wu Xing was diagnosed with lung cancer.

When a sister who had long emigrated to the United States came back to visit, Nan Hua did the unthinkable. She asked for help in getting her family to the US where medical care was better. Nan Hua and Wu Xing left for San Francisco in 1985. But their son did not get his visa in time to go with them. By the time he arrived on U.S. soil a year later, his father had already passed away. Nan Hua had to comfort her son, who somehow blamed her for taking his father away before he had a chance to say goodbye.

That crisis passed and life continued. She watched her children finish high school, then college in the US, and then they each settled down to raise families of their own. Nan Hua began to feel a little lonely.

Then one day in 1997, a letter came from an old friend in China who wrote of a chance meeting with someone who had known Nan Hua from her teenage years in the army: a man named Jiang Xi Wan. It seemed he was now quite an important man in China – an official in Beijing.

The letter from Jiang Xi Wan came a few days after that. Li Nan Hua looked at it for a long time before opening it. Forty years is a long time to wait for a letter. In it Jiang explained, finally, why he had never replied to hers.

After leaving their unit, he was transferred to a secret location and had been forbidden to have any communication with family or friends. He was not allowed to answer her letters. Today, he is married, has a son, a daughter and grandchildren. He reminisced about their past, and about how their lives didn’t turn out quite the way they dreamed they it would. He included a picture.
Li Nan Hua showed me this picture of a man who she once knew as a boy. “He’s changed a lot on the outside, of course,” she tells me, “but his soul is the same.”

“But Nan Hua, a lot can happen to a man in 40 years,” I reasoned.

“A lot has happened to me in 40 years. I will tell him my story.” She replied.

And the letters that were never written that last time began arriving regularly. The joys and sorrows of a lifetime were relived. Dreams long forgotten began stirring anew. Then one day a different sort of letter arrived.

“Xi Wan is away on business so they forwarded his mail to me, his wife. I can tell by the tone of your letter that you are becoming more than just friends. So I write this letter.

“You are a fortunate woman. You are educated with a happy family and you live in America. I am from the countryside. I know he married me because of my class background. In those days intellectuals who married peasants were praised. I am not educated and I can never talk to him the way you can. But he is all I have. You have so much more. Please leave this little bit for me. Do not write again.”

I visited Nan Hai the day she received the letter. As twilight darkened to evening, we sat at her kitchen table and quietly discussed her options. She was, after all, a woman of a particular generation and culture. Breaking up a family was not acceptable behaviour. She resolved to break off further contact. Then another letter arrived.

“I have devoted my entire life to duty. I have always done what others wanted, first my parents, then my country and later my wife and children. For the few years left to me, I want to finally do something for me. Is it asking too much to think of what I want for once?” Jiang Xi Wan asked.

Jiang Xi Wan is 65 years old today. And while he may not regret his life, he is beginning to exercise his choices differently. His is the generation that has seen more upheavals in values and lifestyles than any other generation in recent memory. And perhaps it is the changes he witnessed that has given him the strength to make such a departure from the rules so late in life.

Just how many rules is he breaking? He is leaving for the States in two weeks. If California law allows, he will marry Nan Hua and stay in San Francisco. If he cannot divorce without his wife’s consent, he will come back to China. Chinese laws allow automatic divorce if one is separated for two years. “We will live quietly in some remote city for two years, and then we’ll marry.” Nan Hua told me.

Jiang Xi Wan’s daughter supports his decision but his son does not. As for Nan Hua’s family? Her children support her. So do I. She’s my aunt.