One day in 1986, in Guilin, Guangxi, an elderly woman from Taiwan flashed nervously into a small local hotel.
When the elderly woman asked the waiter to settle the fee, the other party looked at her name, suddenly raised her head and smiled at her: Ms. Bai Xianhui, welcome back to your hometown! The state has a policy that the accommodation fee for returning compatriots is free, so you don't have to pay.
When he heard these words, Bai Xianhui was quite surprised. It turned out that her identity was very sensitive, so since returning to the mainland, she had been spending the night at the home of Li Zongren's widow, Li Xiuwen. I didn't expect that my every move had long been discovered by the local government.
Why did Bai Xianhui secretly sneak back to the mainland?
Bai Xianhui was born around the twenties of the last century and was the second daughter of Bai Chongxi, a former Kuomintang army general. In 1949, Bai Chongxi fled to Hainan after his defeat and was later tricked by Chiang Kai-shek into going to Taiwan.
Bai Xianhui and her nine siblings, some went to the United States, some went to Taiwan. Two of Bai Xianhui's three brothers later became experts in nuclear power, and the other was Bai Xianyong, who was also ranked first in the history of contemporary Chinese literature.
The eldest sisters, Bai Xianzhi and Bai Xianhui, have also made good achievements in their respective fields of study. Bai Xianhui later married an American doctor of chemistry and gave birth to several children, but she never forgot the hometown where she lived as a teenager.
In 1966, Bai Chongxi died unexpectedly. Bai Xianhui and his brothers and sisters buried him and his mother together, the grave facing the direction of the mainland, to show their homesickness.
In January 1979, the National People's Congress issued a "Message to Taiwan Compatriots," which meant that in the future, Taiwan compatriots could freely enter the mainland to visit their relatives. After Bai Xianhui knew, he wanted to return to his hometown of Guilin to have a look.
But Bai Xianhui was very hesitant in his heart, because his father, Bai Chongxi, was once included in the "List of Ten War Criminals" by the CCP, ranking fourth, and the top three were Chiang Kai-shek, Li Zongren and Chen Cheng.
Therefore, Bai Xianhui hesitated for a long time before deciding to embark on the road back to his hometown in 1986. After coming to Guilin, Guangxi, Bai Xianhui once "disguised herself" and carefully avoided sensitive places every day.
At this time, decades have passed since Bai Xianhui left his hometown. In Guilin, the only person who can be regarded as familiar is Li Zongren's widow Li Xiuwen.
Before liberation, Bai Chongxi and Li Zongren were collectively known as "Li Bai", and they were the first and second leaders of the Kuomintang Warlords of the Gui clan, and the two of them were a pair of good brothers who met from the era of the Northern Expedition.
Historically, Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi have joined forces three times to "oppose Chiang Kai-shek." The last "anti-Chiang Kai-shek" occurred in 1948, during the Battle of Huaihai. In order to drive Chiang Kai-shek out of power, Bai Chongxi seized a batch of ammunition large enough to equip ten divisions of the Kuomintang Central Army.
Subsequently, while stating his intentions to Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi urgently contacted his friend Liu Zhongrong and went to Shanghai to find Wu Kejian of the CCP and show the CCP his intentions against Chiang Kai-shek.
Ten days later, Bai Chongxi found another friend, Huang Shaohu, rushed to Hong Kong and tried every means to tell the Chinese Communists not to believe Chiang Kai-shek's "going to the wilderness." He also said: If Chiang Kai-shek refuses to step down, he is willing to cooperate with the Chinese Communists and let him step down by force.
However, due to some complicated reasons, the CCP at that time still hoped that Chiang Kai-shek would accept the "Eight Principles" and settle the war peacefully, so it did not directly reply to Bai Chongxi. Unexpectedly, a few days later, things took a sharp turn, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down, and Li Zongren came to power.
Things have come to this point, and Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, who are not successful against Chiang Kai-shek, want to pick up the mess left by Chiang Kai-shek, compete with the CCP, and rule by river.
As a result, a million heroes of the People's Liberation Army crossed the river and beat Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi's Gui clan into a flowing flower. After the Gui army was dispersed, Li Zongren fled first to Hong Kong and finally to the United States.
In 1965, Li Zongren returned to the embrace of the motherland, received preferential treatment, and finally died in the mainland in 1969. Bai Chongxi was more unlucky, and in 1949 he fled to Hainan after defeat, and Chiang Kai-shek wrote a letter to deceive him into taiwan.
Someone said in his evaluation of Bai Chongxi: "He was conceited all his life, known as 'Little Zhuge Ge', but in fact he did not have political foresight. "Such a review is really very appropriate.
It turned out that in 1948, Bai Chongxi was bent on cooperating with the CCP against Chiang Kai-shek, but when he heard that he had been listed by the CCP as the "fourth war criminal," he felt very uncomfortable.
So Bai Chongxi, through an intermediary, tried to persuade the CCP to cross himself off the list of war criminals, but was refused. Later, he wanted to "rule by crossing the river", but he suffered defeat and always felt that he was going to be liquidated.
Therefore, after Bai Chongxi fled to Hainan in 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek waved at him, he thought that Chiang Kai-shek could put aside his personal grudges and "counterattack the mainland" with him in the future.
Bai Chongxi can be described as a clever and confused person. Chiang Kai-shek has always been a "small belly and chicken intestines", and his eyes will be rewarded. When Zhang Xueliang first launched the "Xi'an Incident", he had spared his life with all his might, but as a result, he was placed under house arrest for a lifetime.
After Bai Chongxi arrived in Taiwan, he was soon put under "house arrest" in disguise. From then on, he could not leave Taiwan. Every time Li Zongren launched a campaign against Chiang Kai-shek overseas, he was pulled out and went to power to make some remarks against Li Zongren.
Under such circumstances, Bai Chongxi simply became a puppeteer. In 1965, after Li Zongren returned to the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek believed that Bai Chongxi had no more use value, and had arranged for the killer to plot against him many times.
Bai Chongxi finally died violently at home in December 1966, turning green when he died. Although there is no direct evidence, many people believe that he was poisoned.
Now, following on from the opening words, Bai Xianhui "ventured" back to the mainland because he missed his hometown. The reason why he wanted to hide his identity was precisely because Bai Chongxi was once announced by the CCP as the fourth of the "Ten War Criminals" in that year.
Bai Xianhui has no relatives on the mainland, and her brothers and sisters have all gone to the United States and other countries. She was afraid that the registration information of staying at the hotel would expose her, so she initially stayed at Li Xiuwen's house.
One day, Bai Xianhui accidentally saw the news of the release of the movie "Blood Battle Taierzhuang" on the street, and his eyes lit up. Because this was a major victory in the history of the War of Resistance Against Japan, her father Bai Chongxi had made important contributions to the victory of this battle.
To this end, Bai Chongxi also received the Order of the Blue Sky and White Sun, the Victory Medal of the War of Resistance, and the British Bus Samurai Medal. In the past, Bai Xianhui could not believe that the CCP would publicize the Anti-Japanese heroes of the Kuomintang.
So Bai Xianhui, accompanied by Li Xiuwen, bought a ticket to watch the movie. After walking out of the movie theater, Bai Xianhui decided not to harass Li Xiuwen's family anymore. So she moved into the hotel with confidence and boldness, and later the scene described at the beginning of the article appeared.
epilogue
It turned out that Bai Xianhui "disguised and lurked" back to his hometown, and there was no ulterior motive. She just wanted to go back to the land where she and her father, Bai Chongxi, once lived, and take another look.
Bai Chongxi's family was once a famous family in Guilin, Guangxi, and it is said that his ancestor was a jinshi during the Yuan Dynasty, and it has been passed down to Bai Chongxi for the nineteenth generation. But when she returned from a few decades away from her hometown, she found that Bai had already been left out in the cold.
Just so-called: the little one left home and the old man returned, and the township tone did not change the sideburns. Children don't know each other, laughing and asking where the guests come from. Guilin, her hometown, which once brought countless good memories to her girlhood, has now become unaccompanied!
Bai Chongxi's ten sons and daughters are very capable, including not only nuclear power experts and great writers, but also business celebrities. Part of them stayed in the United States and partly in Taiwan.
Because they are branching out in different places, the possibility of returning to Guilin to settle down is already very small. Bai Xianhui returned to his hometown this time, probably planning to move his father's grave back to Guilin. But for various reasons, this wish has not been realized.
I hope that in the future, all the people who went to Taiwan from the mainland in those years will be able to return to their homeland after a hundred years.