But today I realize I've never really known that it means to be Chinese. I am thirty six years old. My mother is dead and I am on a train, carrying with me her dreams of coming home. I am going to China. We are going to Guangzhou, my seventy two years old father and I, where we will visit his aunt, whom he has not seen since he was ten years old......he looks like he's young boy, so innocent and happy. I want to button his sweater and pat his head. We are sitting across from each other, separated by a little table with two cold cups of tea. For the first time I can ever remember, my father has tears in his eyes, and all he is seeing out the train window is a sectioned field of yellow green and brown, a narrow canal flacking the tracks, low rising hills, and three peoples in blue jackets riding an ox-driven cart on this early October morning. And I can't help myself. I also have misty eyes, as if I had seen this long, long time ago, and had almost forgotten.......we will catch a plane to Shanghai, where I will meet my two half sisters for the first time.