{"id":75773,"date":"2025-12-28T13:00:56","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T04:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/dec\/28\/liu-de-wen-helping-taiwan-dead-return-to-china"},"modified":"2025-12-28T13:00:56","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T04:00:56","slug":"ferryman-of-the-souls-the-man-who-helps-taiwans-dead-return-home-to-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=75773","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Ferryman of the souls\u2019: the man who helps Taiwan\u2019s dead return home to China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Liu De-wen operates at a sensitive space in Taiwan\u2019s history, as Beijing demands reunification with the island<\/p>\n<p>In the leafy back blocks of a military cemetery in northern Taiwan, Liu De-wen strides through a room holding rows and rows of shelves. He stops and stoops to the lowest row, opening a small, ornate gold door. He pulls out an urn, bundles it into his lap, and hugs it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGrandpa Lin, follow me closely,\u201d Liu says. \u201cI am bringing you back home to Fujian as you wished. Stay close.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/dec\/28\/liu-de-wen-helping-taiwan-dead-return-to-china\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Liu De-wen operates at a sensitive space in Taiwan\u2019s history, as Beijing demands reunification with the islandIn the leafy back blocks of a military cemetery in northern Taiwan, Liu De-wen strides through a room holding rows and rows of shelves. He sto&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1643,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,74,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-taiwan","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75773"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75775,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75773\/revisions\/75775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}