In the dead of night of a winter day, early 1965, Major Chang Li-yi (張立義) was piloting an U-2, the sophisticated reconnaissance plane, cruising as high as 70,000 feet over inner Mongolia, Mainland China when he was hit by a PLA missile. Chang then auto-parachuted to the ground, saved but "captivated".  Though being a POW, he had been detained but fairly treated ever
since for nearly 19 years until late 1983.

The government in Taiwan soon declared Chang had been killed
in action and enshrined him as a martyr.  The air force also arranged his wife Ms. Chang Chia-chi (張家淇), my erstwhile colleague, to China Airlines, and the "widow", who was bringing three children, later married to a gentleman. I call that guy a gentleman because, reputedly, he made a gentleman’s agreement with Ms. Chang that someday he would withdraw himself from the marriage should Maj. Chang appear out of nowhere, anywhere.
He did keep his words.

In late 1983 when the relation between the Strait began to thaw,
Maj. Chang, along with another U-2 pilot, was released and sent to Hong Kong.  I don’t know what kinds of crucial factors the Taiwan government took into consideration then, all I know is both heroes were rejected to enter the Island, and the U.S., actually the CIA,
made compensation to the "pawns" by accepting them, giving them jobs, granting them permanent status. After five years or so,
Maj. Chang returned to Taiwan, and that gentleman walked away.
The star-crossed lovers finally reunited. I was more than happy to pick the couple up at the JFK airport every time when they came to New York City to visit their daughter and grand children in mid 1990s.  I thought they would have been happily together till the end of their time, but pitifully, Ms. Chang died ere long after she retired from the company.

Last weekend in a TV interview the anchorwoman asked
Maj. Chang that had he ever thought of remarrying someone else while he was detained in the Mainland, in the forlorn hope that he would someday see his wife again?  The utterly gray-headed Chang, now 81, smiled calmly but a little bit shyly like a teenager,
and said, "No, I would never think of others. She is the most beautiful woman to me, ever.  You know, maybe the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder." At the instant, immediately came into my mind was the lines of that famous poem "離思":
曾經滄海難為水, 除卻巫山不是雲;
取次花叢懶回顧, 半緣修道半緣君.