ROOTS

It was a pleasant surprise when I found out about my Chinese roots in the book entitled, "China: Its Most Scenic Place - A Photographic Journey through 50 of Its Most Unspoiled Villages and Towns."

My husband and I would like to visit China and Viet Nam. Our plans was delayed a few years ago when the SARS epidemic took place. Last year we again delayed the trip because of the Bird Flu. We both would like to see the Great Wall and my husband would like to visit Viet Nam to see the village where I was born.

The book mentioned that more than 1,000 years ago, near the end of the Tang Dynasty, a group of Hakka people, also known as the Jews of China, built an earth towers, a ring-shapped, self-contained housing complex, resembling a circular fortress. The towers were so well-built that they protected the Hakka people from Japanese pirates while other provinces became much easier targets.

I learned from my brother L that my ancestors, the Hakka people, are nomads from Kwangtung. Nomads are members of a wandering tribe. This is so fitting that my ancestors left China in the early 1920's. After the communist took over South Viet Nam, my family were among the boat people in late 1970's risking our lives in the open seas in search for freedom and liberty.

It is also a perfect fitting that the nickname for my sister V is wandering feet. It explains why I am well-adjusted when moving from New York to Michigan to St. Louis without much trouble adepting to the new environment. It is in our roots that we found evidence that we are the people of wander. Our strength and our determination sustain us through our early years struggling to survive in America.

I only have one regret that my late father did not have an opportunity to visit China. Even though he was born and grew up in Viet Nam, he always considered himself as Chinese. He tried teaching us Hakka at home and made every efforts to send us to Chinese schools so that we learned to read, write and speak Chinese. I remembered the notebooks my father deligently wrote sentences with pronunciation of Hakka and their meanings in Vietnamese. The notebooks become the unofficial textbooks passing from me to my younger sister and then to my youngers brothers.

I still remember the words my father spoke to us, "Don't forget your roots." I hope to learn more about my Hakka ancestry and to visit China in the near future.