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Every morning, at the temporary offices of all kinds of government department, people gathered anxiously asking the same question again and again.  The answers of that question-is there a seat available forme? seemed always to be the disappointed one which started an another humid southern China day without any promising what so ever.

Those fortunate ones who had had a long and uneasy waiting were finall granted a seat on a boat bounded for Hong Kong or Taiwan.  The cost they had to pay for their way out was not just facing the uncertainty of future.  For all of them had to bear the sorrow of being separated from their love ones for the rest of their life.  Someof them, like my parents and grandparents would never set their feet on their homeland again.  At last, their fates were changed when the university my parents worked for did manage to find enough seats for my whole family to be onboard a cargo ship bounded for Taiwan via Hong Kong. That was the starting of the journey of no return.   ....to be continued.