A true story

Over the course of lunch, my dad told me a story of one of his aunts, named L below. L was 25 and married with 2 kids in 1949. Her husband was in the air force of GMD, and he retreated with the rest of the army to Taiwan, leaving L behind in Mainland. Since then they haven't seen each other for over 30 years, only communicated through letters intermittently. L brought up the kids alone. Despite no hope for reunion in foreseeable future, they both remained single, until they met again in HK in 1983. L have since migrated to Taiwan after the reunion.

The story really strikes me, as it is even harder to believe than fiction. Separating for 30 years and still able to keep the marriage is simply unimaginable. I am not sure if I can do it after 6 months, without a known duration of separation. I am sure stories like this is quite common one or two generations before. Comparing this to the headlines we see in HK newspapers recently (Edison Chan), I realized the world has really changed a lot.