My father Luo Ronghan

Author: Luo Dongjin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-01
Features: Excerpt: On February 14, 1939 (the 26th day of the twelfth lunar month), I was born in Changcun, Changzhi City, Shanxi Province. When I was born, my father was leading the 15th Division eastward. Upon learning that my mother was about to give birth, he rushed from the army to the village where she was, waiting in the main room for me to be born. When the sound of my first cry filled the room, the medical staff lifted the door curtain to congratulate him, and then he entered to see the infant already wrapped in swaddling clothes. My mother asked him to give me a name. Since the army was advancing eastward to Shandong, he thought for a moment and named me "Dongjin," then left in a hurry. Due to the chaos of military life, neither my parents paid special attention to the exact day I was born. My mother only remembered that when she gave birth, the villagers had already started preparing for the New Year, so she knew I was born in the twelfth lunar month, but she couldn’t recall the specific day. My younger sister, Luo Ning, was born on January 4, 1951, also in the twelfth lunar month. For a long time, we celebrated our birthdays on the same day. Later, when Uncle Liang Biye organized his wartime diary, I found my exact birth date in his entries.
When filling out forms, people often encounter a section labeled "Place of Origin." "Ji" refers to the ancestral home, while "Guan" refers to the birthplace. For much of China’s thousands of years of history, social changes were minimal. People often lived in their ancestral villages for generations. Therefore, "Ji" and "Guan" were often the same, and people collectively referred to it as "Place of Origin." However, in the last century, Chinese society entered a period of intense upheaval and rapid change, and things became different. Take me, for example: my ancestral home is in Hengshan, Hunan, but I was born in Changzhi, Shanxi. I only stayed in my birthplace for a hundred days before being carried off to Shandong by a porter. If someone asks about my place of origin, or more colloquially, where I’m from, it takes a bit more effort to explain. Saying I’m from Hengshan—only after I became an adult did I go there to trace my roots. Saying I’m from Changzhi—I only lived there for three months and have almost no memories of it. Saying I’m from Shandong—this is closer to the truth, as my childhood was spent there, and it was the locals who fed me sweet potatoes and pancakes. Many people like me, in my generation, find it hard to clearly state their place of origin.