Ｔｈｅ　Ｓｔｏｒｉｅｓ　ｏｆ　Ｅｍｉｇｒａｔｉｏｎ　ｉｎ　Ｃｈｉｎａ.docVIP

Ｔｈｅ　Ｓｔｏｒｉｅｓ　ｏｆ　Ｅｍｉｇｒａｔｉｏｎ　ｉｎ　Ｃｈｉｎａ 　　 I. Good-bye to Hometown 　　In the early morning of August 13, 2000, Mr. Xu Jibo and his family from Nanxi town got up very early. As one of the first families of emigrants from the areas of the Three Gorges Reservoir, Mr. Xu Jibo was leaving for the Chongming County in Shanghai to make new homes there along with his wife, his two daughters, and more than 600 other country fellows. 　　Shanghai is an economically developed area in China. And Chongming is a suburb county in Shanghai. Three months before that morning, sponsored and organized by the local government, Mr. Xu Jibo had paid an investigation visit to the Chongming County on behalf of his family with the other will-be emigrants. He saw the land allotted to him as well as the crops on the land planted for him by the local villagers. During his stay there, he also affixed his signature on the blueprint of a two-story house that he chose for his family. After he came back from Chongming, he made a promise with his relatives that no one of them would weep when they were leaving their hometown, since emigration is a happy event. 　　At six o’clock that morning, Xu Jibo came to his farmland and dug out a young banyan tree with mud and planted it in a plastic bail. The young banyan tree will be a forever memory for his hometown. 　　At seven o’clock, Mr. Xu’s family and their relatives who came to see them off found themselves arriving at the bank of a river, with no one speaking even a word during their walking to the river. 　　A separation was going to take place in such a sudden way that the whole atmosphere was overwhelmed by sad feelings. Xu Jibo and his relatives couldn’t help weeping or crying. The only person who didn’t weep was an old man who is Xu Jibo’s father. The old man said: “Stop crying! Stop crying! It’s a happy event.” Xu Jibo squatted weeping on the bank of the river for ten minutes, and then he took a final look at his will-be past house and said: “We have to