When Korea War broke out, my father was a junior in SuZhou High School, from where every graduate was guaranteed a seat in college. He signed himself up to join the Army along with other 40 or so schoolmates who all later were sent to different army schools to get trained before being sent out to the frontline. Failing to prevent dad’s action, grandpa was heartbroken. He had planned for dad to aim the best university in the country since the first day he took dad into his family, sending dad to Holly Light (ShenGuang) Middle School, one of the best middle schools in SuZhou, and to SuZhou High School, the most prestigious private high school in the city, and seeing university only a year ahead. Besides the young, eager ambitions, another decisive reason for dad to do what grandpa had failed to prevent was to thin the gray clouds over grandpa’s head, who was unfortunately labeled as a capitalist even though all he had been doing was to treat patients and have inherited some properties from his own father. Dad told grandpa to hang his army-joining announcement to the wall to make it visible to every visitor at the first step inside the house. After many tears and goodbyes, dad, as the group leader, leaded his schoolmates up to North in a train, leaving his comfortable, sheltered life and the promise of an university education, without looking back, without much knowing of what was waiting ahead for him, and without realizing his young live would be changing forever, if not for worse, definitely not for better either.
