An Indian woman who came to Beijing to trace her step-sister has had an emotional reunion. (Representational Image, Thinkstock)
An Indian woman who came to Beijing to trace her 81-year-old step-sister has had an emotional reunion on thursday on the sidelines of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first visit to China.
Jennifer An, 62, daughter of Chinese marine engineer An Chi Pong who lived in Chennai for more than 40 years, finally met her step-sister An Roesai here nearly 75 years after their father left Roesai in China and migrated to India, where he later died.
The tearful reunion was arranged at an Indian restaurant in Beijing, four days after PTI highlighted Jennifer's arduous journey to Beijing to locate her step-sister.
State-run China Radio International (Tamil service) arranged the reunion after locating Roesai, who stays with her extended family, through the Chinese social media.
Jennifer's husband, V R S Balaji, had sought Modi's help through a letter, saying they were motivated by his efforts to reunite a Nepalese boy with his parents during his visit to Nepal last year.
The Prime Minister today arrived in the ancient Chinese city of Xi'an. He would be in China on a three-day visit.
However, the reunion happened without any official intervention.
The sisters hugged and cried when they met at the restaurant. They communicated with the help of a translator.
But the reunion turned out to be an anticlimax as some of the accounts Pong had circulated in India stating that his Chinese wife and six children were killed in Chinese city Nanjing during WW-II were contradicted by Roesai.
Roesai said their father left her with his step-mother when she was only five and never returned.
Contrary to the earlier version that Pong's entire Chinese family was killed in the war and only Roesai survived because she lived in a village with her grandmother, Roesai said her father divorced her mother and that she was their only child.
Pong, who studied at the Oxford University in early 1940s, first settled in Mumbai in 1945 and later moved to Chennai and married Irene Perera, with whom he had four children, including Jennifer. Pong died in 1982 at the age of 80 years.
Roesai said she had a torrid time trying to live through the difficult phases of her life. She survived with the largesses given to her by her relatives and suffered until she married.
She said initially she did not want to meet Jennifer but changed her mind later.
The two sisters plans to spend the next few days together and Jennifer invited An and her family to visit her father's Indian home in Chennai.