 Growing up mixed 混血儿 hun xu'er |
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 | | Growing up mixed |
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Growing up mixed 混血儿 hun xu'er
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For as long as I can remember, my father has always told me that my grandfather (ye ye) had come from China. He told me that my grandfather migrated to the Philippines from southern China, but my father had never known exactly where from. As a child, my father fed me bits and pieces of stories that I constructed into fantasies about his life in China and journey to the Philippines.
My mother and father came from different sides of the world; and for a time, I had not known very much about my father's side. My family took trips to Poland to meet my mother's relatives quite often; but it was not until I went to college that I had the opportunity to see Asia. In 2004, I had the opportunity to study abroad in Beijing and learn Mandarin. In 2006, I returned to Beijing for one year, and had the opportunity to fly over to the Philippines and meet my father's family.
It was in the Philippines that my grandfather's story began to unfold. My aunt had kept a few personal documents of my grandfather's at her home. Among these personal effects were photographs of a family and a house, his identification card, an addressed envelope, as well as a document from Hong Kong. The address on the envelope and the document were both written in traditional Chinese characters. No one in the Philippines had had it translated, or had been able to read Chinese, with the exception of my deceased grandfather. Unfortunately, my studies of the language were limited to simplified characters.
When I returned to Beijing, I asked my father to send me the photographs and the envelope. I searched to no avail for the meaning of my grandfather's family name, as well as for people who might share the same last name. I felt stuck at one point. Then, one day in late March, I asked my Chinese teacher if she could read the address on the envelope. I realized then, she should have been the first person to ask. She immediately translated the address from traditional characters to simplified characters, and identified the location of the sender. She also identified my grandfather's name, and that this envelope once contained photos. The only question left unanswered was: who was the sender?
There was only one way to find out. The envelope was sent to my grandfather from a city called Nan'an, just outside of Xiamen, in Fujian Province. My teacher helped me locate the Overseas Chinese Federation in Fujian. In April 2007, I decided to fly down to Fujian and investigate.
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