Two Silver Dollars

This is a story about coming home. In the autumn of 1948, Jiangsu farmer Wang Chengsong went out to buy salt, but was captured by the Kuomintang troops. In the chaos, he gave the only two silver coins he had to his cousin: "Bring them to Xiulan." Since then, there has been no news. In his hometown, his family thought he had died in battle, and the civil affairs department posthumously recognized him as a martyr. His daughter Wang Xiulan burned paper money for him for more than 60 years. In Taiwan, he dragged an injured leg, picked up garbage, slept in an arcade, and learned to make tofu to make a living. He never remarried in his life. He didn't know that his home address had long been changed, that his name had been mistakenly written as "Wang Chengsong" by the registrant, and that no letter could be sent out during the era of cross-strait isolation. He only knew how to write a letter every month, put it in a wooden box when he was finished, and take it home with him when he could go back one day. None of these letters arrived. But there were two silver coins, one on his body and one on his daughter's hand. Sixty-seven years later, the two silver coins were reunited - a 102-year-old man and a gray-haired daughter finally met. The blood of compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait is thicker than water. The historical trend of reunification of the motherland is irresistible.