Happy Veterans Day 2013!

Happy Veterans Day! 

Today we celebrate all the people that have served in the armed service.

I know a family member that have done that, my grandfather.  My grandfather was a general in the Nationalist Party in China, I found this out two month ago while writing my newsletter about my family during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  He passed away a few years ago, not from years in the communist prison or the cultural revolution, but ironically because of carbon monoxide poisoning in his own home.

left to right: My Grandfather, me, my mother & grandmother

Here is a few paragraph talking about my grandfather, if you like to read more on our family during the Chinese Cultural Revolution please check out my newsletter http://cacbc.org/Educational_Tours/november.pdf

"By 1949 my grandfather had been elevated to the position of General in the Nationalist Party and was stationed at Beijing when the Communists won and liberated it.  This, among other liberated cities resulted in some 520,000 Nationalist Party members being killed, wounded, or captured by the communist.  My grandfather was among the captured.  To avoid any more bloodshed and fighting, an agreement was made between the two parties, which released my grandfather from his rank and sent him back home to live a normal life. 
 

During the next eight years he and my grandmother had three children, my mother in 1950, my aunt in 1952, and my uncle in 1957.  However, in 1958 during the purging of the rightist, the communist decided to go against the agreement with the Nationalist Party.  They put my grandfather on trial, found him guilty, and sent to prison for the next 15 years.  Harsh as it was, he was lucky to be in there closed in from the outside world, because during his prison years Chairman Mao was eliminating his enemies.  People like my grandfather were being ostracized and executed."