Connecting hearts and emotions across the Strait
As the Qingming Festival approaches, spring has fully claimed the streets of Shanghai. From my office at Sanda University, I watch the lotus pond ripple under a light breeze. My ginger cat, Mimi, makes her afternoon rounds for treats while a solitary black swan glides by with elegant loneliness.
This is my life: a Taiwan compatriot, a professor of English and a college dean. More importantly, I am a middle-aged wanderer who finally found a home here. My wife is a Shanghai local. Together, we are a living sample of a "cross-Strait marriage".
Over the past decade, trips back to Taiwan have become interrogations of curiosity and concern. "How is Shanghai developing?" "Does your wife like Taiwan food?" "Is mobile payment really that convenient?" Beneath these questions lies a cautious probing of a relationship that has grown heavy.
Since the Democratic Progressive Party took power, the atmosphere has chilled. Flights have dwindled, academic exchanges are stifled and family reunions are no longer a given. My friends in Taipei message me to "stay safe" as if Shanghai were a combat zone. They are not being dramatic; they are products of a local news cycle that feeds on the rhetoric of imminent war and economic decay.
The fallout is tangible. A friend who ran a Taipei travel agency specializing in mainland tourists saw his staff shrink from 30 to three before closing last year. "It is not that I did not work hard," he wrote. "The times simply did not give me a chance."
So, when news broke that the chairwoman of the Chinese Kuomintang party Cheng Li-wun would lead a delegation to the mainland — the first such visit in a decade — it struck a chord. While her talk of "seeking peace" and "increasing welfare" may sound like political slogans, for us it is reality. It is about more flights, stable businesses and the freedom for young people to seek a future.
Coincidentally, the film Sunshine Women's Choir, from Taiwan, has recently debuted. A story of incarcerated women finding healing through song, it shattered box office records in Taiwan. My wife, a rational woman who rarely shows vulnerability, wants to see it. "I have been stressed," she told me. "I heard this one is a tearjerker."
For 10 years, she has carried the quiet weight of marrying a man from Taiwan in a volatile era. When friends ask if I am "okay" during election cycles, she laughs it off. But at night, I see her studying complex political terms on the news, trying to decipher what our future holds.
Most people do not care about "grand narratives". Like the women in the film, they want safety, their children's smiles and hope. The story of a mother forming a choir in prison resonates because love and hope are universal. They transcend geography.
As my wife watched the trailer, she recognized the actresses from the variety shows she used to enjoy. To her, Taiwan is not a political symbol; it is the pop culture that raised her. Similarly, for me, the mainland was not a distant concept; it was the literature of Qian Zhongshu and the voice of Faye Wong. We share a language, a literary history and the same songs. These memories are our strongest bonds.
Predictably, the film sparked a minor firestorm among the green camp, represented by the DPP, in Taipei, who decried the "belittling" of the island. My friends there are unimpressed. "Can we stop with the politics?" one posted. "It is just a movie".
They are right. Cultural exchange is a form of politics — not the kind involving deception, but one centered on people. When mainland audiences weep with actors from Taiwan, the walls built by political maneuvering look flimsy.
Chairwoman Cheng will arrive in April, visiting Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing. I will take my wife to the cinema soon. Afterward, I will call my family in Taiwan and tell them: I am in Shanghai, watching a movie from Taiwan in a room full of mainland friends, all of us wiping away the same tears.
The author is the dean of the School of Foreign Languages at Sanda University in Shanghai.
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