[Chronology + Feelings of Home and Country + Group Portraits + Chaoshan Culture + Overseas Chinese Batch of World Memory Heritage + Red Turbans and Going to Nanyang]
In the 1980s, a stack of undelivered "dead batches" buried in dust at the bottom of an old camphor wood box revealed a shocking secret that spanned half a century.
Forty years ago, he got on the red-headed boat and left only one sentence: "When I make a lot of money, I will come back and marry you."
Forty years later, she is now a gray-haired grandmother, still sitting at the entrance of the village every day, watching the ebb and flow of the tide.
She thought he had changed his heart, married a new love in Nanyang, and returned home rich and wealthy;
Little did he know that hidden in that pile of yellowed overseas Chinese papers were his three broken fingers, the bullet he took for his brother, and the bloody love letter he failed to send before his death.
From the bluestone alleys in Chaoshan to the Chinatown coolie shop in Singapore;
From the Burma Highway during the anti-Japanese war to the root-seeking craze of reform and opening up.
An overseas Chinese letter carries the joys and sorrows of three generations and records the deepest love and pain of that era.
"The sea breeze blows across the red-headed boat. Grandma, I brought your love letter home."
Open this book and it will take you closer to that period of history that should not be forgotten, and understand the deep-seated affection of the older generation.
Mrs. Lin Xu (grandma/Xu Yulan)
