First Email from China's Relatives

1 February 2006
I was so happy today! My first cousin's daughter, in China, wrote me an email, in English!

My fear of losing connection with my relatives in China is now a past. When Dad passed away, nobody, in my family in Malaysia, had written to the relatives in China. Mum does not know how to write. I do not know how to write Mandarin either. My brothers know how to write but they are ???? to write. I have only met my relatives once in 1999, phoned my uncle and first cousin once a year to wish them a happy Chinese New Year.

Communication was not fully understood because I could not speak the Teochew dialect the way they spoke. My China relatives spoke 'pure' Teochew. Mine have developed into our own family's kind of Teochew. I would say it has been malaysianised, with a little of Malay and other languages and dialects. I could remember when we talked to each other, when I was visiting them, in 1999, quite often we would look at each other with blank expressions when we don't understand the words exchanged. I just love to hear the 'pure' version of the Teochew dialect. It is so gentle.

I was worried that if my Mum, my uncles and aunties died, the family connection would slowly fade too, due to distant and so little communications and visits. Even though I only spent a week with the relatives in China, I could not deny my desire to be connected to them forever. I fear losing them.

Thanks to the internet world of electronic mail, I am now connected to my roots in China.