I Pledged My Life to My Country, and the Nation's Goddess Never Married for Me

This book is also known as: After a Lifetime Away, Three Thousand Warships Escort Me Home

[Male-oriented + regret + wartime setting + quotable lines galore]

Lu Yanxin, a national icon who lived through the war years, appears on the program My Forebears.

She tells the audience the story of her life.

She never married, waiting for one man her entire life.

She once arranged to elope with him.

But in the end, he never showed up.

Now she is old.

All she wants is to find him and ask whether the land is at peace, and whether he is well.

Countless people online believe Lu Yanxin was deceived by a scoundrel.

They rush to condemn the unknown cad.

But as Lu Yanxin tells her story,

the man she has never been able to forget finally comes to light.

His name is Lin Mubai.

When the Japanese invaders captured Beiping,

he was a young student at Yanjing University.

He went wherever he was needed, wanting only to leave one last glimmer of hope for the land where he would live and die.

When the Japanese invaders carried out the Nanjing Massacre,

he was a leader among Chinese refugees overseas.

He rallied the people, wanting only to contribute what little he could to his homeland’s resistance.

At last, the Japanese invaders announced their unconditional surrender.

He sat in front of the radio, weeping with joy,

yet had no way to return to the land of Huaxia where he had been born and raised.

He was part of the lived experience of that humiliating chapter in history,

yet his name was never recorded in the history books.

When the reason Lin Mubai had failed to keep their rendezvous was revealed to everyone,

everyone broke down in tears.

A man who pledged his life to his country could no longer pledge it to the woman he loved.

And when people found out where Lin Mubai was,

three thousand Beihai warships resolutely set sail for a foreign land to escort him home.

Who says only those standing in the light can be called heroes?