Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the Chinese Civil War who escaped with the Nationalists to Taiwan at the age of 13. Now 90 years old, Gao saw his family torn apart by civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and says he fears that the two sides’ successors are once again inching toward war. “Politics is ruthless,” says Gao in his recent interview with Chai. “Those who forget that history of suffering are destined to suffer again.”

Back in 1948, when he was 13 years old, Gao left his home in Shandong province, weathered a perilous cross-country trek to escape the fighting that had engulfed China, and eventually escaped to Taiwan, where he lives today. Chai Jing’s original 2012 interview with Gao aired on CCTV-1 to great acclaim, but there was much content that was elided due to state-media censorship and the sensitivity of the topic. For that reason, Chai and Gao decided to revisit that interview and fill in some of the gaps. In new portions of the interview, Gao recounts his wartime experiences fleeing through southern China; his hardscrabble existence in Taiwan as a newly arrived refugee; his subsequent education and legal career; and his more recent efforts to help repatriate the remains of former Nationalist soldiers who spent their lives longing to revisit their relatives and hometowns in China.

Chai Jing, who worked as a reporter, newscaster, and host at China Central Television from 2001 to 2014, has lived abroad since 2017. In 2015, her self-funded and hugely influential documentary “Under the Dome,” which raised public awareness of air pollution in China, was the subject of several official censorship directives. It was viewed more than 200 million times before it was completely censored online. In 2023, Chai began her own YouTube channel, on which she broadcasts in-depth interviews on topics as diverse as China-Taiwan relations, the war in Ukraine, international jihadism, and Chinese history and politics. A recent article in Matters provides a panoramic look at Chai Jing’s career, past and present, and the inspiration she provided for young journalists. CDT previously translated, in two parts, Chai’s interview with a Chinese mercenary fighting for Russia in Ukraine.

In mid-May of this year, Chai Jing’s best-selling 2012 autobiography “Insight” (the same title as a CCTV program she once hosted) was recalled from multiple Chinese e-commerce platforms including Taobao and JD.com, ostensibly due to unspecified “quality issues.” CDT Chinese editors reported on this thinly veiled censorship of Chai’s book, and noted that as of May 21, the book’s page on Douban had also been deleted. It seems extremely likely that this censorship is related to Chai’s ongoing series of hard-hitting YouTube interviews, all of which are self-produced and uncensored.

Following on from Part One, below is Part Two of CDT’s full translation of Chai Jing’s interview with Gao Binghan, published with Chai Jing’s permission. It picks up with 13-year-old Gao Binghan still fleeing south with Nationalist troops as they retreat from the advancing People’s Liberation Army (PLA). This covers the remainder of the interview, between 13:43 and 53:17. Some explanatory links and descriptions of audio-visual content have been added for clarity.

Chai Jing (V.O.): Liu Ruming had been a renowned Nationalist general in the war against Japan’s occupation of China. During the [1933] campaign to defend the Great Wall, he personally led his forces into battle. His troops had once laid down their lives to defend this land, but now Liu had become one of those threatening to destroy it.

Chai Jing: Here’s what I can’t quite understand: during the war against Japan, Liu Ruming’s troops had been seen as national heroes, and he was a highly respected figure himself. He even sent his own son [to the U.S.] to study aviation. [Liu’s eldest son, Liu Tieshan, returned to China after his training, became a fighter pilot, and later died in battle.] So how did he and his troops fall so low during the civil war?

Gao Binghan: During wartime, desertion is a natural phenomenon. Those soldiers were just trying to survive.

Chai: And what did civilians do to survive?

Gao: Under those circumstances, anyone who was able to—men, women, and children—fled into the mountains. Only the elderly were left behind. The common people felt very resentful [at being abandoned].

Chai: Gao Binghan said he could never understand why [the retreating Nationalist] soldiers would set fire to villages and markets, smash stoves and crockery after they’d used them, and poison wells (to prevent pursuing PLA troops from using them). How can you destroy these people’s stoves and cookware, he wondered, when they still need them to cook with?

Chai (V.O.): In mid-May, when Liu Ruming’s troops entered Fujian, the Nationalist government-backed currency had collapsed. Fujian’s provincial government would only provide supplies if payment was made in silver dollars [because of hyperinflation]. Mired in a desolate region with an inhospitable climate, and unable to supply his troops with adequate clothing or food, Liu Ruming wrote: "Never in my military career have I experienced such misery and privation." In retaliation, Liu Ruming disobeyed the Fujian military governor’s orders to stay in northern Fujian to block the PLA’s southward advance. Instead, he and his troops continued retreating south. By that point, the relationship between local authorities and the military had become openly antagonistic.

That same month, Gao Binghan—trailing along behind two straggling Nationalist soldiers—arrived at Shibei village in Pucheng county, Fujian. Like them, he wore a military uniform, but it was too big for him, and hung down to his knees.

Gao: When I first saw that old lady (in the village), she reminded me of my grandmother. I nodded to her and sat down. Those soldiers went into her room and were rummaging through her things. As soon as I sat down, as soon as I laid down, I fell asleep. But when I woke up, I saw that those two soldiers had their heads smashed in.

Chai: Oh… [reacting in surprise]

Gao: Late that night, the old lady’s kids had come back down from the mountain and found the three of us sleeping there [in the house], with our guns. Her sons killed the two soldiers … [stuttering] …they beat them to death. Their brains were splattered on my face. The sound woke me up, and I was so scared, I started crying. The old lady hugged me and told her sons, "He’s just a kid. Don’t hurt him." It was drizzling rain, I still remember. I knelt down in front of her and kowtowed, and then they let me leave.

Chai (V.O.): The old woman picked a few leaves from the courtyard and boiled them in a bowl of hot water for Gao Binghan to drink. Then she took him by the hand and pointed to show him which direction the retreating Nationalist troops had gone.

Chai: When I interviewed Mr. Gao in Taipei in 2012, it was sweltering hot, but he wore a tightly buttoned shirt and tie, with a vest and suit jacket. During the five hours we spoke, he didn’t take a single sip of water. He said it was a survival skill honed during his time on the run—he’d learned to endure hunger, thirst, and pain. He rolled up his pant legs to show me the scars from his ordeal sixty years ago. I still remember the feeling of touching those black scars. They felt hollow, with no flesh but a thin layer of skin. Mr. Gao said they had been eaten away by maggots.

[The next section is footage from the 2012 documentary.]

Chai (V.O.): Amidst a chaotic crowd, someone had spilled burning porridge on him and scalded both of his legs. But there was no medical treatment available, and throughout Gao’s journey, his wounds continued to fester and attract maggots.

Gao: I thought about suicide many times.

Chai: Really?

Gao: Yes, because the pain was so unbearable. But I had to go on living, for my mother’s sake.

Chai: Not for yourself, but for your mother?

Gao: For her. I had to stay alive to see her again.

Chai: [present day footage] Thirteen-year-old Gao Binghan had no one to take care of him, and nothing to eat. He scavenged for leftover horse fodder and competed with rats for scraps of food. He wore a string of garlic around his neck, and would gnaw on a clove of garlic when drinking unboiled water.

He was suffering from a high fever and delirium, and both of his legs were swollen up like balloons. When he arrived at the village of Jiumou in Fujian, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see a soldier wearing a red-star cap.

Chai: [2012 interview footage] How did you react?

Gao: When I saw that red star, I thought of what my mom had told me: “If you see [someone wearing] a red star, run away as fast as you can. They’re the ones who killed your father.” I just stared at him, but he was pulling me along, and I had no choice.

Chai: Were you scared?

Gao: Sure I was. He was pulling me along, and I thought he was going to push me off the mountain, kill me on the rocks below. But he brought me to this natural spring, washed the maggots off my legs, and put red mercury [Mercurochrome] on my wounds. Then he used the bandages in two first-aid kits to bandage my legs. I was surprised to meet someone good from the Eighth Route Army, because my mom had always told me they were bad guys. But here was a good guy, and he’d saved my life. So after that, I followed the PLA for a while.

Chai: You followed the PLA? Why?

Gao: I knew it was the only way I could catch up with the Nationalist troops.

Chai: Gao Binghan ate lotus leaves he’d picked along the roadside. When the PLA troops stopped to cook food, they’d give him a spoonful of rice to eat. Along the way, he sometimes saw wounded Nationalist soldiers limping along. They made no attempt to flee, or to put up a fight.

(When the PLA soldiers) would invite them to come along, the Nationalist soldiers would rip the sun insignias from their caps, throw them away, and limp alongside the PLA troops, carrying their rifles backwards with the bullets removed.

During the Chinese Civil War, 1.88 million Nationalist soldiers defected to the Communist camp.

Chai: Did you ever wonder whether there was any point in continuing your journey?

Gao: I didn’t even know if I was going to come out of it alive.

Chai: Right. And where were you heading to?

Gao: I had no idea where I was going. I didn’t yet know I’d end up in Taiwan.

[A black-and-white photo of Gao as a boy, accompanied by audio of a conversation between Chai and Gao.]

Chai (V.O.): You were just a child. What was your understanding of the war?

Gao (V.O.): I thought the Chinese grown-ups were really stupid, not even as smart as us kids.

Chai (V.O.): Why did you think they were stupid?

Gao (V.O.): Because I couldn’t figure out why they were fighting. What was the point? If you can do a good job and make sure everyone has food to eat, then they should let you do that. Whoever does the best job should be allowed to do it. Why fight about it?

Chai: Gao Binghan’s injured legs slowed him down. He soon fell behind the PLA troops he had been following, and had no one to show him the way. He dreaded arriving at crossroads, because he didn’t know which direction to choose.

Chai: In mid-May, he reached Nanping in Fujian. Nanping was a large city in central Fujian province, but at that time, all the shops were shuttered, and there were no city lights or pedestrians. At dusk, he saw a truck that had been set ablaze along the banks of the Min River.

There were two roads ahead of him: one led to Fuzhou, the other to Xiamen. Gao Binghan walked for a kilometer along each road before deciding to go to Xiamen. “That was the most dangerous road,” he told me, “but that’s exactly why I had to take it.”

Gao: What I mean is whichever road had more corpses, more bodies and litter left behind, that’s where the Nationalist troops had passed.

When I got to Xiamen, I saw a few corpses lying in the road. Because my pants were so tattered, I took a pair from one of them, but I felt bad about it. Wearing his pants felt disrespectful.

Chai: Why did you feel that way?

Gao: It’s only natural. I shouldn’t have done that. He was lying there dead, and now he didn’t even have any pants. It was selfish of me.

Chai: A lot of people would justify it by saying that in wartime, when you’re trying to survive, there’s no room for that sense of morality.

Gao: But morality is innate. There’s no getting around it. That basic human sense of good and evil isn’t something you can just discard. I have my mother to thank for that.

[A black-and-white portrait photo of Gao as a boy, alongside his mother.]

Chai: I remember you telling me she made you practice calligraphy as a child, always writing the same characters over and over.

Gao: Ah yes, it was "Do not do unto others what you would not like done unto yourself." [from the “Analects”] She’d make me practice writing those characters every day.

Chai (V.O.): On the eve of Dragon Boat Festival [on June 1 of that year], Gao Binghan finally caught up with Liu Ruming’s troops in Longyan, Fujian province. After retreating over 600 miles south from the Yangtze River, they arrived in Xiamen [in early October 1949] just before the Mid-Autumn Festival. They hoped to be able to hold out in Xiamen for three to five years.

[Black-and-white wartime footage, accompanied by sound effects of fighting and explosions.]

Chai (V.O.): [Despite the Nationalists’ plan to] “defend Xiamen, Kinmen Island [Quemoy], and Taiwan," by the afternoon of October 16th, the PLA had reached the center of Xiamen Island. Hoping to evacuate over 30,000 of his soldiers, Liu Ruming personally went to Kinmen Island to obtain ships, but only two landing craft, capable of holding a few thousand people, were dispatched.

Chai: Sometime after 11:00 P.M. that night, all the lights on the island suddenly went out, suggesting that the power plant had been destroyed. [The Nationalists’ defense of] Xiamen was abandoned. The troops on the beach were disorganized, milling around in complete chaos. Among this crowd of tens of thousands was 13-year-old Gao Binghan, limping and leaning on a stick, waiting.

Chai: Just before daybreak, the landing craft could wait no longer and began moving toward shore. Gao Binghan said that at that life-and-death moment, the noisy crowd suddenly fell silent. Never in his life had he heard such a silence. Then he heard the screams of people being trampled underfoot.

Gao: I stepped over corpses to get up onto the boat. A soldier pressed my shoulder down with the butt of his rifle butt as he tried to step over me.

Chai: He tried to climb over you?

Gao: Yes, he tried. Then another officer came from behind and knocked away the butt of his rifle, the one that had been pressing down on my shoulder. That’s why I wasn’t knocked down.

Chai: If you had been knocked down, could you have got up on your feet again?

Gao: No, I couldn’t have stood up. There was this sound from the crowd, like an ocean wave, as they were all pushed down.

Chai: Gao Binghan was pushed into the boat by the crowd, having lost both of his shoes. The [crew of the] landing craft were anxious to close the door and depart, but people were still rushing to get on. The date was October 17th, 1949. The founding of the People’s Republic of China had been proclaimed 16 days earlier.

[Archival footage of Mao Zedong reading his speech amid a crowd of people atop Tiananmen Gate.]

Mao: …To relieve the people of their sufferings, and to struggle for their rights … [the PLA] overthrew the reactionary rule of the Nationalist government!

Chai: It was the last ship from the mainland to Taiwan.

Gao: The landing craft had to close (its door). It was leaving shore and had to close up. But people were crammed in so tightly that the door wouldn’t close. Some of those onboard started shooting their guns and shouting for people to stop pushing so the landing craft could close its door. But it couldn’t close because it was crammed with bodies.

Chai: Were they shooting their own comrades?

Gao: Yes, they tried to stop them from coming. It was a bloodbath outside. And after the landing craft shut its door, the soldiers who didn’t make it onboard started shooting at the ship. That was bloody, too. It was awful, just awful. That’s why I say that war is horrifying. [sighs] We can’t go to war again. I trust that China and Taiwan won’t go to war with each other.

Chai (V.O.): According to PLA records, this was the fate of those [Nationalist Army] foot soldiers who were left ashore:

[A portion of a 2020 CCTV documentary about 1949 fighting in Xiamen features black-and-white war movie footage, with battle sounds and voice-over narration.]

Male narrator (V.O.): The People’s Liberation Army annihilated a total of 27,000 Nationalist Army troops.

Chai (V.O.): I haven’t seen authoritative official statistics from either the Nationalist or the Communist sides regarding civil war casualties. The data most frequently cited online is that military and civilian casualties exceeded ten million. This was the largest-scale, most far-reaching Chinese civil conflict of the twentieth century. From that point on, China and Taiwan would be separate political entities and military rivals.

When the landing craft (carrying Gao Binghan) reached Kaohsiung [in Taiwan], it was forced to stop outside the harbor. By late 1949, the Nationalist government had transported over 600,000 troops to Taiwan. In order to avoid warlordism and maintain public security, Taiwan’s Provincial Governor Chen Cheng decreed that arriving troops must lay down their weapons and heed orders while disembarking. But the officers and soldiers onboard the ship considered surrendering their weapons a great humiliation. Gao Binghan saw some of them brandishing their weapons, vowing to either die fighting or go back home.

But the warships in Kaohsiung harbor had their cannons aimed at the ship. Chen Cheng ordered the soldiers onboard to disembark, unarmed, within a certain deadline, or be sunk. The ship and its passengers, with no food or water, remained outside the harbor for one full day and night. The following day, Liu Ruming commanded his officers and soldiers to abandon their weapons and go ashore. Gao Binghan watched them throw their weapons into the sea. The Northwest Army, which had billed itself as "uncowed by privation or slander, loyal and steadfast to the end," had ceased to exist.

The loudspeaker announcement instructed the passengers to disembark in three groups: officers, rank-and-file soldiers, and family members and dependents. But Gao Binghan had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. He went to a refugee station, where he was given a bowl of congee. As he squatted on the ground to eat, he thought to himself, “I did what you said, mom. I’m still alive."

The small, narrow island of Taiwan had absorbed two million people in one fell swoop. Schools, temples, and warehouses were crammed with people. Gao Binghan slept on wooden benches at Taipei Railway Station, and competed with stray dogs for scraps of food in garbage heaps.

[Footage from the 2012 documentary]

Chai: How did you spend Chinese New Year and other holidays?

Gao: Before dawn on New Year’s Day, I’d climb up a mountain, face the mainland, and have a good long cry. I’d shout as loud as I could, and tell my mom I missed her.

Chai (V.O.): Many years later, his younger brother told him that every Chinese New Year, his mother would place a lantern, made from a hollowed-out daikon radish, at a nearby crossroads. This was a Shandong custom, to light the way home for those who had traveled afar.

Chai: When I was interviewing him in Taiwan, Mr. Gao Binghan handed me a sheet of paper. [An inset photo of a bright yellow paper certificate with black calligraphy, several red official seals, and a small photo of a young Gao Binghan.] It was a piece of handmade cotton paper from 1948, thin and soft to the touch. During his journey, he had lost his bundle, including the rope [given to him by his mother—see part one] that was inside his bundle, but somehow this paper had survived. How he managed to preserve it, even he doesn’t remember. It was his junior high school admission certificate. Before he left, his mother tucked the paper into his bundle and said, "In times of war and chaos, the scholars are the first to be swept away by the tide. But the future era will depend on knowledge, and this is your path."

Chai (V.O.): Thanks to that piece of paper, Gao Binghan was able to enroll in night classes at Taipei Municipal Chien Kuo High School, where he studied while working part-time. He was later admitted to the Law Department of the National Defense University’s Management College. When he graduated in 1963, he asked to be sent to Kinmen to serve as a military tribunal judge. China was still reeling from the Great Famine, and Chiang Kai-shek was making preparations to launch a counterattack from Kinmen. Gao Binghan thought of Kinmen as being “closest to home,” and he envisioned being the first to land on the mainland and see his mother again. But his first case as a judge resulted in the execution of a man who had tried to go home to see his mother. [The man was an army deserter who used a tire to try to swim from Kinmen in Taiwan to Xiamen in China to visit his mother, but he was carried back to Kinmen by ocean currents and arrested.]
[Footage from the 2012 interview]

Gao: I had become the executioner of a man who wanted to go home to visit his mother, because he missed her. A day or two before the execution, he said, "I know you’re going to execute me anyway. I hope you can do it a bit earlier."

Chai: Why?

Gao: He said he knew there was no way he’d ever see his mother in the flesh, but he hoped could visit her as soon as possible in spirit form.

Chai: When you handed down that man’s death sentence, did you ever ask yourself what you’d have done if you were in his position?

Gao: Sure. I’d have deserted even faster, even earlier, than he did.

Chai: Gao Binghan spoke to the head of his legal group and requested that another judge take over the case, but his supervisor said there was no legal precedent to do so. When Gao Binghan insisted that he couldn’t bear to oversee the case, his supervisor said, "And do you think I could? I’m from Xiamen—my hometown’s right across the strait." The supervisor pointed to some documents on his desk: they were from the Ministry of National Defense, demanding that the case be concluded within a week. The punishment for desertion was execution, with no exceptions, and it was intended to serve as a deterrent to others. Then he softened his tone and said to Gao Binghan: "At least with you overseeing the case, he won’t have to suffer so much."

Gao: Before his execution, I had the soldiers cook him some meat, a big plate of food, and gave him a big bottle of sorghum whiskey. I told him it wouldn’t be long, and that he should try to eat something. He said he didn’t feel like eating. Then I tapped him on the head and said, “If you can’t eat, you should drink that whiskey.” [long pause] He looked up at me, took the open bottle, and guzzled it down. Right after that, they were getting ready to shoot him, and wanted me to leave, but I asked them to wait for a bit. You know why? [wipes his eyes and starts to cry] Because … because I was worried the liquor hadn’t kicked in yet, and I didn’t want him to suffer. It was strong stuff, and I knew it would only take a few minutes to get him drunk. That’s why I asked them to wait just a bit—to ease his suffering.

[Screen fades to black, with background music.]
[The following section is illustrated with various images, including a photo of an elderly Chiang Kai-shek; Chiang and other leaders in front of a memorial inscription on Kinmen Island; two propaganda posters from China urging the “liberation” of Taiwan; and lastly, a photo of Gao with his wife and three children. All five family members are dressed in academic caps and gowns.]

Chai (V.O.): By the late 1960s, after numerous failed plans, Taiwan’s project to retake the mainland had essentially been abandoned. On April 5, 1975, Chiang Kai-shek died. Per the customs of Jiangsu and Zhejiang [Chiang was born in Zhejiang province, and his ancestral hometown was in Jiangsu province], his casket was not buried underground: as an exile, he would be laid to rest sometime in the future, once his remains had been returned to his ancestral homeland. [After a period of lying-in-state and a state funeral, Chiang’s casket was sealed in a black marble sarcophagus and interred at Cihu Mausoleum in Taipei, Taiwan, where it remains today.]
[On learning of Chiang Kai-shek’s death,] Gao Binghan wept bitterly. What had once been his only hope—Chiang’s promise that "I brought you out, and I will bring you back there"—was now shattered.

[In the wake of Chiang’s death,] rumors were rife among Nationalist Army veterans that the PLA was planning to inflict a bloodbath on Taiwan. Gao Binghan asked his wife to fetch a bottle of sleeping pills from the hospital. If war between China and Taiwan broke out again, he planned to add the sleeping pills to a big pot of porridge and the whole family would eat it together. He couldn’t bear to be a refugee once more, he said. It was too painful.

[Footage of Jimmy Carter reading a televised speech on December 15, 1978.]

Carter: A joint communiqué on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China, dated January 1, 1979.

Chai (V.O.): In 1979, China and the United States established diplomatic relations. The mainland ceased shelling Kinmen Island and published a "Message to Compatriots in Taiwan," calling for reunification and expressing hope for the establishment of transportation, trade, and postal links. Taiwan was by then under the rule of President Chiang Ching-kuo [Chiang Kai-shek’s son], and his response was the "Three No’s": no contact, no negotiation, and no compromise [with the PRC government].

On Kinmen Island, an enormous slogan proclaimed: "Unify China Under the Three Principles of the People." [The three principles, first articulated by Sun Yat-sen, are nationalism, democracy, and the livelihood of the people.] In Xiamen, across the strait, another slogan appeared: "Reunify China Under ‘One Country, Two Systems.’”

That same year, Gao Binghan traveled to Spain to attend an international legal conference. Knowing there would be delegates from the mainland there, he planned to ask one of them to deliver a letter to his mother.

Gao: (reciting the letter he wrote) "Mother, over all these decades, I’ve sustained my willpower, and my will to live, in the hope of meeting you once more in this life. Promise me, Mother, that you’ll wait for me to come back to you, alive."

Chai: But Gao Binghan kept the letter in his pocket and never took it out, not even after the conference had ended. His delegation leader had announced the Justice Ministry of Taiwan’s "Six No’s" policy: no contact, no greetings, no conversation, no interaction, no cooperation, and no photographs [with delegates from the PRC]. Even in elevators, the members of the Taiwanese delegation had to avoid eye contact with the mainland delegates, for fear that a facial expression might be leveraged for China’s "United Front" propaganda. And delegates from both sides were required to report on one another.

When the conference ended and the mainland delegates were taking a group photo, Gao Binghan squeezed into a back-row seat so that he would be included in the photo. He hoped that if the photo were published in mainland newspapers, his mother might see it and realize he was still alive.

As for the letter he kept in his pocket, he managed to send it to China by routing it via the U.S. In 1980, he received a reply from his eldest sister. After reading just one line, he ran off and spent the afternoon tramping through the mountains in the rain, shouting the same phrase over and over again: "I’m sorry."

Chai (V.O.): [The letter informed him that] his mother had died over a year earlier. She had kept two things in her pillowcase: a childhood photo of Gao Binghan, and a small cotton jacket he had worn as a child. She had kept these items her entire life, and when she died, they were cremated with her.

Chai: In my interview notes from the time, I’d written that when Mr. Gao got to this part of the story, he suddenly stopped and said, "Sometimes I wish relations between China and Taiwan hadn’t thawed.”

I was puzzled. He explained, "If they hadn’t thawed, then my mother could have stayed alive in my heart forever."

[1987 televised announcement about the lifting of martial law in Taiwan]

Announcer: "Martial law in Taiwan will be lifted starting at midnight on July 15, 1987."

Chai (V.O.): By 1987, when Taiwan began lifting bans on political parties and newspapers, most of the 600,000 soldiers who had come to Taiwan with the KMT [Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party] had been demobilized from the army and were in their sixties.

On May 10th, Mother’s Day, of the following year, over ten thousand KMT veterans stood in formation at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei. They wore white with messages on the front that read "Homesick," and on the back, "I miss you, Mom."

[Black-and-white images of protesting veterans wearing shirts emblazoned with messages and carrying signs with slogans, accompanied by audio of the veterans singing the song “Mother, Where Can You Be?”]

Veterans (V.O.): [singing in chorus] Formations of geese, soaring through the clouds / What have you glimpsed on your long journey? / Might I ask what you’ve seen, / and whether you’ve news of my mother?

Chai: Gao Binghan told me he was very conflicted at the gathering because he had been awarded the "Order of Loyalty and Diligence" from Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo. He had been steeped in the values of patriotism and party loyalty, and wondered whether this sort of protest constituted a betrayal.

But what he saw at the protest changed his mind. The square and streets were filled with veterans prostrating themselves on the ground, begging [the government] to allow them to “go home," and calling for their mothers. Gao Binghan told me that those calling for their mothers were all old men, and they knew they couldn’t go back.

Chai: Looking around him, Gao Binghan said he wanted to shout, hoping that someone would heed his advice: "The time has come, don’t you understand? Never in Chinese history has there been a time when people were banned from going home for decades." Pulling off the towel he’d been wearing around his neck, he waved it in the air, and joined the others in their singing.

Veterans (V.O.): [singing in chorus] Mother, I miss you so! / If only we could turn back time …

Chai (V.O.): On October 15, 1987, the Taiwanese authorities announced that residents of Taiwan would be allowed to visit relatives on the mainland. On May 1 of 1991, Gao Binghan returned to Heze in Shandong province. On the same day, Taiwan announced the termination of the “Period of Mobilization for the Suppression of the Communist Rebellion,” officially putting an end to the state of civil war.

[Footage from the 2012 interview, with video of Gao’s hometown.]

Chai (V.O.): Setting foot in his birthplace for the first time in over four decades, he lingered alone at the entrance to the village for half an hour before he mustered the courage to go in.

Gao: "The nearer to home, the more timid I grow." The ancients knew what they were talking about. That really summed it up perfectly. [The quote is from "Crossing the Han River," by Tang Dynasty poet Song Zhiwen.]

Chai: So how did you go into the village?

Gao: When I got there, I was naturally looking around, and an old man asked me, "Sir, who are you looking for?" So I told him I was looking for Gao Chunsheng. That was my childhood name.

Chai: [laughs]

Gao: The old man said, "Gao Chunsheng? Oh my, he died abroad, many years ago. He’s long gone."

Chai: Mr. Gao once told me that the whole time he was fleeing, he never cried once. Children only cry, he said, when they see their mothers.

Chai (V.O.): But when he first saw his mother’s funeral urn, he didn’t shed a single tear, although his younger brother sobbed.

Gao: When I saw my mother, I knelt before her ashes, and scolded her.

Chai: You scolded her?

Gao: I said, "Why couldn’t you wait until I came back? I came back alive—why didn’t you wait for me? You promised you’d wait for me."

Chai: Mr. Gao told me that in the Heze archives, he found a list of those who were killed during the period of land reform.

[Image of Gao Binghan on the cover of the book he wrote, titled “The Road Home.”]

Chai: The list included the name of his father, Gao Jinxi, with the annotation: "Nationalist reactionary, rumormonger, engaged in espionage work." The document had been created after the fact. [Gao’s father, a primary-school principal, was executed by the Chinese Communist Party in 1947—see part one.] In the “suggestions” column after his father’s name, someone had written, "Deserves execution."

Gao Jinxi had been one of a group of thirteen people executed in the same batch. Below their listed crimes, there were some annotations such as "wrongly executed," "not deserving of execution," or "executed too hastily" (meaning that there was insufficient evidence).

Chai: After confirming your father’s cause of death, how did you feel?

Gao: My family was considered an intellectual household so naturally, in a time of political revolution, we were the first to bear the brunt.

Chai: Why would intellectuals be the first to be targeted in a political movement like that?

Gao: Because my family had social status and influence. The Communists wanted to do away with all that, so they made an example of us. I used to despise the Communist Party, but later I realized that sort of thing was a natural revolutionary tactic. There’s nothing to despise.

Chai: So you came to understand it as somewhat inevitable, given the historical context?

Gao: Yes, yes. It was a historical inevitability. There’s no need for hatred. It was a historical revolutionary tactic, an inevitable outcome. It was the same on both sides. The Nationalists treated the Communists the same. If you were a Communist, you were shot. In our city of Heze, there was a big pit behind the theater where they [the Nationalists] used to bury people alive. They’d make the Communists dig a hole, sit in it, and then they’d bash them over the head with a shovel and bury them alive. I saw it with my own eyes, when I was still a kid.

Chai: Mr. Gao Binghan told me that back then, the countryside around Heze was Communist territory, so his father tried to stay safe by living in the city of Heze, where Nationalist troops were garrisoned. One day he had to go out into the countryside on some business, and only planned to stay there overnight, but that very night he was captured by four strangers, bound with ropes, and executed at gunpoint. The only Communist Party member in that particular village was Gao Binghan’s uncle, so his mother always suspected that uncle of being the informant. Forty years later, when Gao Binghan returned to his hometown, he went to visit that uncle.

Gao: By the time things opened up and I was able to go back to China to visit, my third uncle was already bedridden and partially paralyzed. My younger brother went with me to see him. It was the first time I’d been back to the village, and I made a special trip to see this third uncle, who was in his sickbed. I even kowtowed to him. My brother just stood at the door and wouldn’t go in.

Chai: Why did you kowtow to him?

Gao: I figured there was no way to prove whether or not he was the one who ratted out my father. Besides, he was the only older relative we had left, the last of that generation.

Chai: And what if he really had done it?

Gao: If he had, he would have been ashamed when I kowtowed to him. He’d feel ashamed.

Chai: And what was your uncle’s reaction?

Gao: [Even though he was partially paralyzed,] he rolled over in his bed, and seemed very moved. He rolled over and gently stroked my head. He seemed quite moved.

Chai (V.O.): Most of Gao Binghan’s relatives on the mainland were Communist Party officials. His eldest sister Gao Bingjie had been secretary to Liu Shaoqi and He Long. His brother-in-law Zhu Shaotian had been Chen Yun’s secretary. His uncle-by-marriage Yang Lin had served as director of China’s Petroleum Industry Supervisory Bureau.

Chai: After learning about Mr. Gao’s family background, I asked him whether he thought his mother might have ever regretted sending him away. He looked away and didn’t answer me immediately, then said calmly: "During the Cultural Revolution, my uncle-by-marriage committed suicide. Some students urinated on his head, and he killed himself by smashing his head against a wall. My brother-in-law was shipped off to Xinjiang for eight years of labor reform." Pausing, he added: "My mother didn’t have much hope that I’d survive. The best she could hope was that I’d manage to stay alive a few more days."

[In footage from the 2012 interview, Gao displays some of his late mother’s possessions.]

Gao: This was my mother’s cupping jar [for moxibustion cupping therapy]. Here’s the thermometer she used. I treasure them. Even though she’s not here, just having her things close to me is a comfort.

That whole “great era” left me with nothing but bitter tears. It beat me black and blue. But seeing that I survived it, that I managed to reach the other shore, I want to use the rest of my life to bring some light into people’s lives, to lessen their suffering. I don’t want to hate.

Chai: When I interviewed Mr. Gao, he led me down to the basement, where there were several urns of ashes sitting on a table. "Brothers,” he told them, “someone from back home came to visit you."

Chai: Mr. Shu Kecheng.

Gao: Yes, that’s Mr. Shu Kecheng.

Chai: Did he have any family in Taiwan?

Gao: No, none. He committed suicide.

Chai: Taiwan had long been a heavily militarized island governed under martial law, existing in a heightened state of emergency. The military wanted soldiers who hadn’t put down roots, and who could be called up for battle at any time.

Chai (V.O.): In 1952, Taiwan’s Military Marriage Ordinance (MMO) stipulated that only officers aged 28 or older, or those who were technical non-commissioned officers, could marry.

All rank-and-file soldiers were prohibited from marrying. They were given a promise in the form of a land-grant certificate which, if Taiwan retook the mainland, could be redeemed for a plot of land.

Gao Binghan said the soldiers took this promise very seriously because in times of war and strife, only land is eternal.

Among Taiwan’s lower-ranking soldiers, nearly one-third remained single. Their only social relationships were with fellow soldiers from the same hometown. They lived their entire lives on the margins of Taiwanese society.

After Gao Binghan established his own law practice, he converted one of his offices into a meeting place for these “hometown associations.”

Chai: During Gao Binghan’s escape through southern China, a middle-school student named Wu Quanwen had given him a straw raincoat. After the rapprochement between China and Taiwan, Wu bought a plane ticket to China, and planned to meet his mother there for the Mid-Autumn Festival. But before he could make the trip, he was diagnosed with cancer and died suddenly.

At the Mid-Autumn Festival, Gao Binghan brought Wu Quanwen’s ashes home, following Wu’s original itinerary through Hong Kong to Guangzhou, and then to Lanzhou.

When he got off the plane in Lanzhou, there was a woman in a wheelchair waiting there for him. It was Wu Quanwen’s 91-year-old mother.

Gao: [I told him,] "Even though your mother didn’t get to see you again while you were alive, at least she can fulfill her wish and see your ashes." She rolled over to me in her wheelchair, and said, "I didn’t get to see my son, but thank you for bringing me his remains. I’m so grateful.” There’s joy within that misfortune.

Chai: How do you interpret that?

Gao: No one can predict who’s going to leave this life first. When white-haired parents have to say goodbye to their black-haired children, that’s a terrible misfortune. And this son who grew up in mother’s embrace is, in the end, buried by his mother.

Chai: Like he’s somehow still in her embrace?

Gao: Yes. You were born from her embrace, and in the end, she cradles you again as you leave this world.

[Footage from the 2012 documentary]

Chai (V.O.): In the basement of Gao Binghan’s Taiwan home, his mother’s dark-blue silk dress still hangs from the wall. To protect its delicate threads, he never washes it.

Gao: Every day I go into the basement and place my head against my mother’s dress. That way, I can imagine I’m still in her arms. Even though I’m nearly 80 years old, in some ways I’m still like a little boy.

Chai: [new documentary footage] Mr. Gao turned 90 years old this year. He says when he dreams of his mother, she’s always twisting his ear, and has a fearsome expression on her face.

He asked me if I understood, and I said I didn’t: I always thought dreams were supposed to be warm and gentle. “No,” he said, “gentle things are too fleeting, too easily forgotten. And I don’t want to forget her.”

Ten years ago, Gao Binghan wrote a will instructing his children and grandchildren that after he died, he wanted his ashes scattered on his parents’ grave. That way, time and the elements will cause them to seep into the soil so that Gao and his parents can be reunited underground—as if he were still in his mother’s embrace.

Chai: [Seems to be quoting Gao Binghan] "Years ago, I escaped by following these soldiers, and now I’m bringing them home."

[Footage from the 2012 documentary]

Chai (V.O.): But for those with no living relatives [in China], all Gao can do is find a corn field or pagoda tree in the deceased’s home village, and scatter their ashes there on the soil.

Gao: I say to them, "Brother, you’ve truly made it home." The villagers nearby think I’m completely loony. [laughs] They must wonder what I’m doing, and who I’m talking to. But in my heart, I know I’m keeping a promise I made.

Chai: Are such mementos really that important?

Gao: Those who haven’t wept bitter tears in the dead of night know nothing of life.

[Screen fades to black with musical accompaniment]

Chai: Since I didn’t have a team with me when I was conducting interviews in Taiwan, I hired a cameraman from Taiwan’s CTi Television to help me with the filming. Halfway through the interview, Mr. Gao paused to speak to someone behind me. "It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said consolingly, “That’s all in the past now." It was only when I turned around that I realized the cameraman had been crying.

In a taxi together after the interview, the cameraman told me that he was born in Tainan, Taiwan. His mother was indigenous, and his father had been a Nationalist soldier. He said he’d never cared much about his father’s past, but after listening to the interview that day, he somehow felt a deeper connection to the issue.

I told him I felt the same. We were of a similar age, grew up on opposite sides of the strait, and had studied different history textbooks, but for both of us, the accounts we’d seen were rooted in political ideology. But this interview reminded me that history is a living, breathing thing. It’s connected to me, to him, and to many people; it’s connected to the past, but also to the future.

The KMT and CCP never signed a ceasefire agreement, so in a sense, we are still living amidst that civil war.

Chai (V.O.): Given your frequent appearances in mainland media these days, are there those in Taiwan who claim you’ve been co-opted?

Gao: Well, what I talk about is humanity. I tell them I was born in Shandong, but Taiwan raised me. I say that both sides are my mothers.

Chai: But if someone rejects you because you’re not from Taiwan originally, how do you respond?

Gao: Although someone may not share my way of thinking, he’s still my brother. I still love him. I can’t push him away just because it’s painful. That’s not who I am. So I won’t give up. I’ll never give up.

Chai: But some people feel they can’t wait [for unification], or don’t have the patience, or want to resolve things through force. What do you think of such views?

Gao: On the subject of force, that’s what I fear most. It’s terrifying. War is always a tragedy, something I cannot endorse. The guns of war.

Chai: So what would you suggest?

Gao: Communication. Because of our geography, blood ties, language, and culture, communication between us is only natural. We’re brothers.

Chai: Many people feel that the forces of politics are overwhelming, and that there’s a limit to what individuals can do.

Gao: We need to work together. People can’t live in isolation. Your value is in how much you contribute.

Love is seeing your own contribution to meeting others’ needs. That’s taking action.

And speaking as a 90-year-old man, I have hope in Chinese young people everywhere. [clasps his hands together in supplication] Grandpa Gao is counting on you all.