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When 62-year-old Jennifer An and her husband Balaji from the South Indian city of Chennai arrived in Beijing last Friday, armed with a few old letters from Jennifer's Chinese father, they never imagined they would succeed in locating Jennifer's long-lost Chinese half-sister.
Jennifer's Chinese father An Chi Pong had always carried a black-and-white photo of his only daughter An Luoxi from his first marriage in Shanghai. But he never made it back to China, after his mercantile ship was stranded in the Indian port of Mumbai in the early 40's.
After 33 years since her father's death, Jennifer An says she decided to take a leap of faith and come to China to fulfill her father's dying wish – which was to see his Chinese daughter one last time.
"We actually thought that we were going to meet her in Shanghai, because the last address my father had for her Remit road Shanghai, 10, Remit road. So were all prepared for Shanghai and we had little days to spend here. So everything is taking a topsy-turvy turn. We never expected to find her in Beijing."
Although Jennifer had no definite plan, on how to find her sister amidst the 1.3 billion people in China, a stroke of luck, helped her to fulfill her mission in just four days.
According to Zhao Jiang, Director of the Tamil Service of China Radio International, who helped Jennifer find her sister, the national government database only had two people with the relevant name. One was an 8-year-old and the other the 80-year-old An Luoxi, who turned out to be Jennifer's sister.
"Many people had seen the news about this Indian lady looking for her half-sister in China, and they sent us many useful information. Someone in Jiangsu province found evidence that the father had served in the Navy during the Chinese people's war against Japanese aggression. Someone who had seen the news on social media helped us find An Luoxi's address."
But to An Luoxi, the sudden discovery of a half-sister, whom she had never heard of, came as a shock.
Her father had divorced her mother when she was a baby and she was raised by her grandmother in Shanghai.
She says that the pain of being abandoned by her father when she was just 6 years old had shadowed her all through her life.
"Everyone in my Shanghai neighborhood knew my story and they used to say look your father would never come back. My father was the most educated from his family. He had studies abroad and became a ship captain. Loosing such an excellent man left a hole in my life that could never be filled."
An Louxi had received just one letter from her father via the Chinese embassy. It was written when he was seriously ill. Jennifer says that after the end of World War II her father An Chi Pong had tried to find information about her lost daughter. He had had finally received a letter in 1982 from the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi with some possible clues as to his daughter's whereabouts. An Chi Pong had immediately applied for his daughter to come to India, but as fate had it, he passed away just 20 days after receiving the letter.
But it was this letter that helped Jennifer track her sister almost 3 decades later. After the tearful meeting, the two sisters exchanged information about their families. Jennifer said their father loved to play Mahjong. And he had also served the Chinese community in Chennai and had even got a separate cemetery for the flourishing Chinese community there.
This fateful meeting coincides with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first visit to Beijing and will serve as a modern day example of the warm people-to-people relations that have existed for thousands of years between the people of China and India.
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