ON the evening of May 31, while watching the news from Hong Kong Phoenix TV, many people were touched by the tears of Lin Yifu.
 Facing the camera, Lin was in tears and unable to speak because of his grief. 
His 90-year-old father died at the end of May in Taiwan and was scheduled to be cremated June 4. However, the Taiwan authorities would not allow Lin to return to Taiwan for his father's funeral.
Lin Yifu is now a celebrated economist, a professor at Beijing University, the director of the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) at Beijing University, and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Besides these academic and political titles, he is a man with a legendary story.
Lin was born into a poor family in Yilan County, Taiwan Province in 1952. He was known as Lin Chengyi when he lived in Taiwan. While in school, he studied very hard. He began as an agricultural engineering student at the "National Taiwan University."
In 1978, he acquired an MBA degree at the Business Management Center of the Taiwan Political University. Later, he turned in his scholar's pen for a warrior's sword and served in the Taiwan army. Eventually, he became a captain and company commander on the front line Island of Jinmen. On May 18, 1979, buoyed by a basketball, Lin risked his life to swim to the mainland.
The then Taiwan authorities regarded him as a "defector" or "traitor." But instead of making his "defection" public, the Taiwan army declared him missing and then declared him dead, in order to save face. From then on, Lin Chengyi no longer existed in Taiwan.
However, he changed his name to Lin Yifu the mainland.
When he applied to the People's University of China, Lin was turned down on the excuse that "this man has an unclear background." But Beijing University took him in.
While studying in the Economics Department of Beijing University, Lin began to show his excellence with his fluent English and solid academic background in Western economics.
Theodore Schultz, the 1979 Nobel Prize-winning economist and a professor at Chicago University, made a trip to China in 1980 to study the country's agriculture and other aspects of the economy. When he visited Beijing University, Lin acted as his interpreter.
Lin's fluency in English and sharp sense of economics left deep impressions on Prof. Schultz.
After he obtained another master's degree in Political Economics at Beijing University, on the recommendation of Prof. Schultz, Lin went to Chicago University in 1982 to pursue his doctorate under the tutorship of the Nobel laureate.
Nearly all significant developments during the later part of 20th century have been related to the Chicago school. Chicago University has produced nine Nobel Prize winners. The university is well known for its strict policy concerning the degree applications of Ph. D. candidates, one-third of whom usually leave esch year without a doctorate degree.
Among more than 30 candidates in the same class, Lin was the only one who acquired his degree in 1986 after four years of study. He achieved this with the sacrifice of not leaving the university campus for the entire four years.
He then embarked on a one-year post-doctorate program in the Economics Growth Center of Yale University.
In 1988, beyond many people's expectations, he was determined to take his wife and two children back to the mainland for permanent residence. Thus he became the first student with a doctorate degree in Economics returning from the West since China carried out reform polices and opened up to the outside world.
After returning from abroad, Lin began to work as deputy director at the Development Research Center under the State Council until the early 1990s. His main task was to conduct research on China's agriculture.
Those were the golden years as Lin threw himself into academic research relating to China's economic reality at the same time becoming prominent in international economic circles.
In 1990, his article "Collectivization and China's Agricultural Crisis in 1959-1961" was published in the world's most influential economics magazine, the Journal of Political Economy. This stimulated enormous reaction and controversy and, since then, the Chinese famine has become a hot topic in debates in international circles.
In 1992, he published another article "Rural Reforms and Agricultural Growth in China" in the American Economic Review. It became one of the most frequently quoted articles concerning Chinese agricultural problems.
These two papers have won Lin a reputation in international circles and he has been considered a new star in the fields of development economics and agricultural economics.
But Lin's interests were broader. Not satisfied with Chinese economic and education studies lagging, he initiated the establishment of Beijing University's CCER under the auspices of the university, World Bank and Ford Foundation and became its first director in 1995.
The center has become the headquarters of Chinese economic study, producing far-reaching influence at home and abroad.
Many of Lin's policy proposals have been highly respected by the top leaders.
Lin has had students all over the world, from institutions including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and Chicago universities.
Lin now appears to have achieved fame and success. He is a member of a number of prominent societies in China and the U.S. He is also a guest professor at the Los Angeles School of California University, adjunct professor at the Australia National University and Hong Kong University of Sciences and Technology, adviser to the World Bank, a member of the Standing Committee of the China Reunification Promotion Board.
He has also received numerous awards and honors for his prolific publications.
However, Lin, with a clear Taiwanese accent, has always had mixed feelings. He regretted not being able to return to Taiwan to visit his parents for the past two decades.
When the CCER was established in 1995, his mother passed away but he couldn't return to pay his respects. When he couldn't return for his father's funeral, he asked his wife to return in his stead.
Until now, many Taiwanese have not been able to understand the mystery of why this special man risked his life to swim over the waters to the Chinese mainland.
"I came over to the mainland for the sake of the reunification of our motherland across the Straits.
"I wish a better future for both the mainland and Taiwan. I could not fulfil my filial obligations to my parents, and that's the price I had to pay," Lin said.
His legendary story won't be over until, one day, the mainland and Taiwan are finally reunited.