Many years ago, a married man from Quanzhou (in Mandarin) or Zhuangjiu (Amoy), Fujian province came to the Philippines in search of opportunities. He met a teacher from Leyte named Jacinta Congzon, who became his second wife. They bore four children, one of whom was Belen, my mother.

The two lived in Balingasag, Misamis Oriental, and managed a trading business. Occasionally, Tan Tiam Po would return to China and bring goods to his original family. During one of these trips his plane crashed. His body was never retrieved.

That was 60 years ago.

Last year, my brother-in-law, who became interested in our continuous search for our relatives in China, sent a photo of my grandfather to CCTV4. Fortunately, the photo was seen by a neighbor of our kin. It was familiar to him because he had seen the same large framed photo hung on the wall of the house of my grandfather. To make the story short, my mother and other family members went to Guanzhou months later -- an emotional first meeting.

In February 2008, our relatives returned the gesture by coming to Cagayan de Oro. They also went to Balingasag to see our ancestral house -- owned by the Goking family and now rented by someone else.

If it were not for a single photo that we had kept all these years, we would probably have never met any of them. This makes me happy because I'm a photographer.

A mystery: My grandfather spoke English, unlike other Chinese immigrants of his time. He was an informal ambassador and translator. His children and grandchildren in China, however, do not speak English at all -- except for one, but his vocabulary is quite limited. This would be an interesting subject for research, and I hope to visit China soon.