PHILIPPINE JOURNALIST’S LONGLOST CHINESE BROTHER

By Lin Xiaoqing

A photo of Cristina Pisco (third right), Wu Wenfa(second left) and his family and the author (second right).

Cristina Pisco sat silently in the hotel lobby, staring at the revolving door with both nervousness and hope.When I sat down next to her,she smiled, and her stress melted into relief. A journalist from the Philippines in her fifties, Cristina was visiting China as a member of a media delegation from ASEAN countries.

After the welcome dinner,instead of heading back to her room like the other guests,Cristina sat in the hotel lobby waiting for her Chinese relatives from Fujian Province.

Touching Story

A few months ago, a group composed of two media executives and 23 journalists from 18 mainstream ASEAN media outlets toured Shanghai, Zhejiang Province and Jiangsu Province as part of the China-ASEAN Media Journey on the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road 2018,jointly sponsored by ASEANChina Center (ACC) and China International Publishing Group (CIPG). They also attended the First ASEANChina Media Cooperation Forum at Yew Resort in Wuxi,Jiangsu.

During our stay in Shanghai,Cristina, a reporter for the Philippine newspaper People’s Tonight, revealed to me that she has a half-brother named Wu Wenfa in Fujian, but also that they had lost contact for years because she can’t speak Chinese and her brother’sfamily doesn’t speak English.

Cristina Pisco(right) and other ASEAN media delegation members in Hangzhou,Zhejiang Province, a stop on their journey along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

I was so surprised by the situation that I vowed to do whatever I could to help the family. I called Wu,informed him that his halfsister Cristina was visiting China as an ASEAN media delegation member and relayed the trip schedule.Touched by Cristina’s story,ACC Secretary-General Yang Xiuping instructed her staff to do whatever they could to facilitate the reunion.

When Cristina learned that Wu and his family would fly from Xiamen to Wuxi to meet her, her face was filled with excitement. Over the subsequent days, she stayed focused on work. She was

fairly quiet compared to her peers, but paid close attention to every interview, compiling considerable notes and pictures. And she was right on time for every event on the busy schedule. Although she performed admirably as a journalist, I could tell Cristina was looking forward deep in heart to seeing her brother.

Wuxi, the final stop of the media delegation, was where the forum was to be held as well as the place where Cristina hoped to reunite with her brother. I felt a bit nervous in anticipation of how the moment would play out.

Family Memories

After some time, Cristina suddenly stood up and pointed at the lobby door. A man with a dark complexion in his sixties entered, followed by a middleaged woman and a young girl.Wu and his family showed up.

When this moment finally arrived, it lacked crying, tears and hugs. They just smiled at each other. Their warm smiles conveyed decades of longing and worries of two families in two countries.

Immediately, Wu pulled out a set of laminated photos he had clearly treasured for years, which had helped preserve memories of his younger sister. He had photos of Cristina and her family,Wu himself and his brothers with their mother, a childhood photo of Cristina and a photo of Cristina and her husband 30 years ago. Wu collected these photos when he visited the Philippines more than a decade ago.

The two families couldn’t wait to learn more about each other, so instead of going to Cristina’s room, they just sat down in a café in the hotel. I joined them and interpreted everything so they could understand each other. Wu passed me a small notebook and asked Cristina to write down her siblings’ names,genders, dates of birth and professions. Cristina smiled and took the notebook. Both were eager to learn as much about each other as possible.

In the corner of the café, Cristina and Wu dug for memories about each other. Although they didn’t have many recent shared experiences, their shared roots enabled them to understand each other well.

Shared Happiness

Cristina and her brother spent the whole night in recounting their family history, unraveling a story involving two families in China and the Philippines.

In 1934, their father left Fujian for the Philippines with his fellow countrymen when he was only 13 years old. At first, he worked in a barbershop and then managed to open a food store.He had three children with Wu’s mother and four with Cristina’s mother. Now the seven half-siblings live in different places around the world ranging from Jordan to Chile, with the Philippines and China’s Fujian and Hong Kong in the middle. Cristina and Wu are the eldest children in their respective families. Wu is 15 years older than Cristina,who was only eight when their father passed away.

Now Cristina and her husband work in newspaper offices. Their three children are university lecturers and engineers. Wu was very happy for her and recognized the familiar smile when she talked about her children. Cristina was also grateful to hear of her brother’s good fortune in life. He started a business from scratch, and now his family manages a garment factory. Wu invited Cristina to Fujian next year to attend the dedication ceremony for an ancestral hall now under construction, and she enthusiastically agreed.

The next day, Cristina was back on schedule at the China-ASEAN Media Cooperation Forum as Wu and his family took a stroll around the resort.After I finished my work at the forum, Cristina had already left the venue. She told me on the phone that she felt bad about distracting me from my work, so she went to meet her brother alone. When I met them at a restaurant, Cristina smiled and apologized further for monopolizing my time.She had asked a journalist working for Singapore-based The Straits Times to write a note in Chinese that read “we can communicate with the help of a translation app.” Over the next couple of days, the brother and sister engaged in more frequent communication through the app while I caught up on my work.

On the last night of their reunion, Cristina took her first photo with his brother and his family with the help of reporters from China Report ASEAN, whom they met on their way back to hotel room.They expressed gratitude with smiles on their faces. They were so polite and didn’t want to trouble anyone.

ALTHOUGH CRISTINA AND HER CHINESE BROTHER DON’T SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE AND LIVE IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES,THEIR REUNION WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN BY EITHER.

Chinese Diligence

After bidding farewell to her brother, Cristina thanked me again and told me things she didn’t even tell her brother. “During this trip I met many successful Chinese entrepreneurs who started from scratch like Jack Ma,” she noted. “This made me realize that the Chinese hardworking spirit is also in my blood.”

After her father died,Cristina’s family survived on a tight budget. In tuitionfree public schools, she and her younger sister studied hard and received excellent scores. Eventually she studied journalism in college in Manila. “I interned at a police station during my senior year,”she revealed. “I was one of four interns from four different universities. I volunteered when asked if anyone wanted to stay in the office to answer phones. I thought this job would give me more inspiration for good articles.”Cristina believes education has the power to transform lives. Inspired by her spirit of hard work, her children were admitted to top universities in the Philippines.

Cristina also expressed her heartfelt gratitude to the ACC for helping her reunite with her brother. After returning home, she published a number of articles about her experience in China on the front page of the People’s Tonight.

Although Cristina and her Chinese brother don’t speak the same language and live in different countries,their reunion will never be forgotten by either. And it took place during a media journey highlighting the ethnic heritage closely connecting the people of China and ASEAN countries.