I don't think Roland or the rest of the Roots group truly realized what their parents and grandparents went through until seeing the villages with their own eyes. I didn't understand my roots until I visited my ancestral village for the first time in 1997. I wanted to write about the Roots program because I knew how wonderful the trip would be for its participants.
"It has been the best experience of my life," says Oscar Gee, a UC Berkeley student. Gee's immediate family came to the United States by way of Burma, a move that once seemed far from his family's middle-class life in San Francisco's Sunset District. "I can see what they're coming from," he says. "I can connect with them a lot more now. I got a part of their experience, a little bit of what they've gone through. It puts things in perspective."
My experiences in China have changed my perspective as well. Back at home, there is a little bottle on my desk. Before I left China, I grabbed a handful of brown, raw rice and stuck in my pocket. The bottle now holds the rice. I look at it when I stress out about "important" things, like having a DSL Internet connection that doesn't work. I look at the tiny grains, and I remember.
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