Stan Lai Sheng-chuan's ancestral home in Huichang, Jiangxi province.[Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

Small town

Lai Sheng-chuan and his brother, Lai Sheng-yu, were asked by their father to return to Taiwan in 1966 to learn Chinese. They spent 10 years there.

"My father was a product of this small town, and I always thought there must be something very special about it, because he was a very special man," says Lai Sheng-chuan, whose father died in 1968 when he was 14 years old.

"He learned English, French and traditional Chinese calligraphy and became a diplomat. Where did all that come from? Of course it came from this town."

It was only in the early 1980s when Lai Sheng-chuan was studying dramatic art at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his PhD in 1983, that he received a letter from relatives in Huichang. From that moment on a long lost connection began to be rebuilt.