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Prologue
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Taoyuan, Taiwan, March
29, 1997
The luggage was coming ast. Too ast.I stood in the baggage claim o Chiang-kai Shek Interna-tional Airport, silently watching the overstued Samsonite suit-cases, the giant cardboard boxes tied shut with red string andthe chewed-up duel bags speed by on the conveyor belt. I wasdizzy rom the buzz o Mandarin — a language I could not un-derstand — and anxious rom wondering who might be waitingbehind the exit door.I was about to meet the Chinese amily that gave me up oradoption days ater I was born, twenty-three years earlier. Dur-ing the past two months since we made rst contact, I had lin-gered in a state o hazy, almost unnatural calm over the suddenappearance o my long-lost parents and sisters. But as I stood inthe Taipei airport, I realized this reunion was real, not a dream,not just some story I might write or the newspaper I worked or.This was actually happening. To me.Nervous and sweating, I pulled my bags o o the belt andadjusted my brown polyester shirt and skirt, an outt I chose orits simplicity and wrinkle resistance. The rest o me looked hor-rible. What a grand rst impression I would make: wild hair and
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mei-ling hopgood
bleary eyes, smelling o airplane unk and the smokers who puedaway during the Japan-Taiwan leg o the eighteen-hour journey. Ithought my heart was going to jump out o my throat.A perky airline employee directed me through customs and toexit
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. The doors slid open to reveal a room lled with people.They were pushing, hanging, standing on a wood rail, wavingsigns in Chinese characters. They jumped up and down, wailedand shouted. I had seen my relatives in pictures, but as I scannedthe Chinese aces, all o them seemed to look alike, with eyes asdark as mine.
My God. How will I know them?
Then I saw the sign, handwritten in thick, black, slanted let-ters:
mei-ling
. A crowd o strangers rushed toward me.
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