A Tale of Two Cities
By Emily Yu (Shanghai)

It has become a tradition for the Chinese to enjoy a long vacation during the first week of October, starting from Oct. 1st, , the National Day. But this year, we have a new reason to celebrate-the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival is falling on Oct. 6th this year, right in the gleeful week of holidays. "Thank God, I'll able to meet my husband without asking my boss for a leave. " My friend Ivy said on the phone. She's been planning on her third trip to Hong Kong this year, in order to meet her husband, Bill, a Taiwanese who's currently working in Taipei as a doctor. It'll be the first Mid-Autumn Festival they spend together since they met three years ago. But still, Ivy is not satisfied. "It's supposed to be a day of family reunion, a day for people to travel back home and sit around the table, having dinner together under the bright moonlight." she said with a sigh, "for us, there's only one moon, but the moonlight will never be the same."

The Cowherd and the Girl Weaver
Ivy and Bill are among the 200,000 cross-strait couples in mainland and Taiwan. When Ivy first met Bill in a cocktail party in Shanghai, she fell for the handsome guy who, at that time, was on his short business trip. Love is sweet, but that was also the beginning of her traveling nightmare.  There's no way for Ivy to fly to Taipei, since the citizens from mainland China rarely get a permission from Taiwanese authorities to visit the island on the other side of the Strait. But interesting enough, Taiwanese are allowed (and rather welcomed) to come, to do whatever they like in mainland, although there's no straight flight between mainland and Taiwan. Thus, when Ivy and Bill got married two years ago, they decided to hold their wedding ceremony in Hong Kong, where they can easily bring the two families and relatives together. And later on, Bill would travel to Shanghai twice a year. But most of the time, they prefer to meet in Hong Kong during the vacations.
"We are almost doomed to be separated from the beginning." Ivy always grunted to me, saying that she wished Bill could move to Shanghai as soon as possible. But the reality is, as the modern young generation of this country, they are both "workaholic", and are reluctant to risk their career. Particularly from Ivy's part, she doesn't want to move to Taipei as some other mainland brides do, because that would mean leaving her dear parents, relatives, friends, and her highly paid job. "I'm not going to end up there being a full time housewife," she insisted, "I love Bill, but I don't like his hometown." I know what Ivy is really afraid of. All the Chinese media are portraying the mainland brides as a miserable group: They were treated unfairly in Taiwan, sometimes being beated by their husbands, and most of them are living a terrible life. Political hostility has made the cross strait lovers become the new "Cowherd and the Girl Weaver". In this old Chinese Mythological Tale, the Girl Weaver violated a heavenly law to marry an ordinary man, a Cowherd. Then the God Mother got very angry, and the couple was forced to be separated. They could only meet once a year on July 7th (Lunar calendar). Now, for Ivy and Bill, the obstacle that forced them apart is as mighty as the God Mother's punishment. Likewise, they'd never know when it would be put to an end, or maybe, it will last for a lifetime.
On the National Day this year, Chinese are going to celebrate the 57th birthday of the PRC. But we should also remember, it's been more than half a century since Taiwan was separated from Mainland China. When Chiang Kai-shek and his defeated KMT Army fled to Taiwan Province in December 1949, no Chinese would ever think that the Taiwan Strait would be a barrier that one can never cross. In March 15th, 1949,Chinese XinHua News Agency issued an editorial entitled "Chinese People shall liberate Taiwan "; And 9 months later, the communist party stated that "the PLA and Chinese people shall achieve the liberation of Taiwan, HaiNan and Tibet in 1950, in order to accomplish the unification of China". At that moment, every man and woman in Mainland China believed that unification of Taiwan and mainland is only a matter of time. But most of them didn't manage to live long enough to see that day coming. And for the younger generation in China, it's almost as hopeless as their parents' age to wait for the day of unification.

Rotten the city
To make things worse, the culture, tradition, and ideological mode has become so different on the two sides of the Strait, that the younger generation almost cannot find a common ground. Thanks to the US and MCT of Taiwan, many young Taiwanese are more pro-Japan than China. They dye their hair in yellow, dress up according to the Japanese style, and know more about Japanese Cartoons than the Chinese tradition.
Take the Mid-Autumn Festival as an example. Since the 1990s', Taiwanese gradually accepted a new "tradition" to have western BBQ and grapefruit on the day of Mid-Autumn Festival, but in mainland China, people are still enjoying their moon cakes and the Chinese feast. "It's almost like another country, and it's so appalling that some Taiwanese are glad to get rid of the traditional culture of China." Ivy told me. Her anger soared to the peak when we watched the television news of Taipei's recent demonstration against Chen Shui-bian. On the screen, a man in red is shouting something like " Zero bribery, A-bian step down". But suddenly, Ivy took a long breath, "Gee, look at that man, he' s tying his head with a banner, just like what Japanese do!"
She personally hated Chen Shui-bian and his predecessor, Li Deng-hui, the men who took power successively, but would do anything to prevent Taiwan from returning to her motherland. "Those two are traitors, the sinner of the history," she would argue with Bill on the phone, but her husband, just like many Taiwanese businessmen in Shanghai, would rather avoid this sensitive topic. But Bill finally set his first blame on "President" Chen this summer, Ivy gladly told me, when the first family's bribery scandal widely arouse the protests of ordinary people. Chen's son-in-law Chao Chien-Ming was indicted in June on suspicion of insider trading, while Chen's wife Wu Shu-chen is also under investigation for allegedly accepting department store vouchers in exchange for lobbying favors. Pressure has mounted on Chen to step down after he was questioned for alleged misuse of a fund intended for state affairs. And hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese has been rallied on the streets in Taipei, urging Chen to give up the power he had abused. Coincidentally, there's a same "anti-bribery hurricane" in Shanghai at the moment, in which the top leader Chen Liangyu was ousted as Shanghai's Communist Party secretary, kicked off the party's powerful Politburo and is now under investigation. "The two cities, Shanghai and Taipei, are both rotten in bribery, but the difference is, our leader was fired but yours still stays in power." Ivy joked with Bill.

A holiday for reunion
Politics is only the side dish of their married life, but Ivy and Bill can never ignore the influence of cross-strait confrontation. There was a period when Bill feared that the PLA would bomb Taiwan for"liberation". The horrible story of how PLA would trample the island is widely believed by Taiwanese. However, on the other side, only few Mainland Chinese believe that a war is unavoidable. After all, we are still a family, how can one beat his/her brothers and sisters with cruelty?
When Chen Shui-bian said Taiwan should overhaul its constitution this September, many Chinese feared immediately that their chance of visiting Taiwan would be thrown in jeopardy again. It has been talked for years that Taiwan should open up to mainland Chinese tourists, but people are disappointed to see that issue being postponed by Chen's "government" year after year. Indeed, many Chinese, including Taiwanese, think that the Chinese government are more active in cross-strait cooperation. Events like "the cross- strait forum on agriculture" would never get the permission to be held in Taiwan. Even some of my "pro-green"(who supports MCT's policies of independence) friends in the island are complaining about Chen's "blockade policy" towards any exchange programmes.
The elder generations, like Ivy and Bill's parents, are still hoping to wait for the day of opening up. I still remember when a friend from Taiwan, a professor from university in Taipei, wrote down on his notebook a poem by Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty: " I gaze upwards toward the moon in the skies, And downwards look when a nostalgia does arise." Yes, the moon represents our nostalgia for the other side of the Strait. When the Mid-Autumn Festival is drawing near, we still wish that the next Festival would be a reunion day for all the Chinese from both sides of Taiwan Strait. As to Ivy, she is now busy making her "Shanghai featured" moon cakes for Bill, and she promised me to bring back a box of moon cakes made in Taiwan.