I like to go to the military village and chat with the veteran grandfathers when I have nothing to do.
One day at the end of July 2015, I went to Erkong Military Village to visit a veteran grandfather I knew.
Several old grandfathers got up from their afternoon naps as usual, and came to the entrance of the old military village one after another, playing chess, chatting, and closing their eyes to recuperate.
These old people, who have gone through half a lifetime from the rain of bullets, will always sit with their waists straight.
When they saw me coming, they told me a story that had just happened.
A veteran who they called "Xiao Liu" rode a bicycle to buy a bento 1 kilometer away every day, just because the bento at that house was 10 Taiwan dollars cheaper than the bento at the entrance of the military village (about 2 yuan).
He took the bento home, divided it into 2 portions, and settled lunch and dinner.
For these grassroots veterans who have no positions, the pension given by the national government is very meager, but it only ensures that the veterans have a small place to live - a house in a military village (property rights belong to the Ministry of National Defense).
Grandpa Liu has been frugal all his life, lived in a military village, couldn't afford to buy a house, and didn't marry a wife and have children.
He sent all his savings back to his hometown, and asked his relatives to buy a house in the local area, and he was ready to return to his roots.
Some time ago, he asked a travel agency to buy a ticket back to his hometown.
He turned off the water and electricity in his house in the military village, asked the administrator of the military village to take back the house, and said to the veterans who had been with him all his life: I am going back to my hometown to care for the elderly.
On the morning of his departure, the travel agency sent a car to pick him up at the airport, but he couldn't knock on the door.
In desperation, he broke down the door and found that Grandpa Liu had died in bed, and the package he was holding tightly in his hand was full of his lifelong thoughts about his hometown.
The 88-year-old man, thousands of miles away from his hometown, in the tropical region of southern Taiwan, in a military village hut with no water, no electricity, and closed windows, and a homesick dream about returning to his hometown, he left alone.
Speaking of this, Grandpa Zhang, who spoke with a strong Shandong accent, was a little excited, mixed with grief and indignation, as if he was asking himself and everyone:
We are all soldiers who defend the country, we don't like the struggle for power and profit of politicians, but we can't help ourselves, we were involved in the civil war, suffered defeat, and came to Taiwan, the Taiwanese did not welcome us, and called us "rice worms"; We could never go back to our hometown, saying that we were "Kuomintang reactionaries." What could we be wrong with?!
Everyone was silent, and no one knew what to say.
I then asked the grandfathers: That little Grandpa Liu, who gave all his life savings to his hometown, is not a small amount, and there is a new house, so did his hometown send someone to Taiwan to take Grandpa Liu's ashes back to his hometown?
The old grandfathers were indignant and said in unison: No! Not a single person came!!