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 be leaving!” He found his elder sister was crying her eyes out at the bank.
    At seven thirty, the emigrants from the Nanxi town got on a bus. And the bus took them to the bank of the Yangtze River, where a nonstop passenger ship was waiting for them. The passenger ship was moving down the Yangtze River up to the place where the River meets the sea.
    II. A New Home Town
    Xu Jibo was the first emigrant from Three Gorges to land on the Chongming Island.                         The Chongming Island at the mouth of the Yangtze River in the East China Sea is the third largest island in China. As a correspondent, I came here to visit the immigrants from the Three Gorges when they had been living here for five months.
    It seems that Xu Jibo was not quite capable of adapting himself to a new life. In the past five months, he had not found a way to make money for his family and was a little bit worried. The young banyan tree that he brought from his original hometown in the Three Gorges withered because of frost, and it resulted in a bad mood of Xu Jibo. However, he was chewing over an old Chinese saying that “a tree will be killed if it is moved whereas a man will be revived if he is moved”. He consulted with his wife about their situation and they are determined to abandon the psychological state of being cautious and indecisive to seek a stable life. They plan to look for a job in a factory in the downtown after the New Year celebration. They also plan to plant counter-season vegetables and fruit trees.
    Like Xu Jibo, Zhang Xueyun who used to be a soldier is also one of the first immigrants to the Chongming Island. He had been to the Island for only two months, and had raised 8,000 RMB yuan to build a beautiful pigsty in a place 200 meters away from his house. He is raising 32 pigs and more than 20 chickens or ducks. In the daytime he worked in a factory, while in the evening he comes back home and looks after the pigs and the like with his wife. He has a long-term plan, and his plan is closely related to a will-be constructed bridge over the river and related to a tunnel under the river. In this way, the Chongming Island will be linked immediately with Shanghai. “At that time the prospect of Chongming is beyond imagination!” he made such a comment.
    Zhang Lin was famous for “naughty boy” in their former hometown in Nanxi. His fellow villagers had been extremely worried that he couldn’t bear hardships and couldn’t tolerate hard work. However, in the Chongming Island, he is registered to attend a taxi-driver training class in Shanghai, and he is making himself as a taxi-driver in the Shanghai city. His wife Gan Xuemei found a job in a textile factory. In addition, they raised two pigs and more than ten chickens or ducks. In terms of what they were worrying about, he replied, “what is important is to set the goal for their future life, and make achievements here”.