I  am 84 years old. I left China when I was 54 and spent 30 years abroad. I am now back in my homeland.

  My  husband  Mei  Yi-chi  was president  of  Tsinghua  Univer-sity before liberation.  After he died in 1962 I lived in the United States with my two daughters. One was on the east coast and the other on the west coast and I shuttled between them.

   When President Nixon visited China in 1972 and the door be-tween China and the U.S. began to open, a friend asked me if I wasn't homesick.  Of course I was, but what could I do?  He told me I could apply at the Liaison Office of the People's Republic of China in

Washington to visit my children in China.  I  went  but  found  that already thousands of people were applying to go to China to visit relatives or on business or tours.

It seemed I would have to wait for years for my turn! I told the peo- ple at the Liaison Office that I was getting old and if I waited too long it might be too late.  They were sympathetic, and in 1974 I was able to come back for a visit.

   During the two months I stayed in China I had a reunion with my son and my youngest daughter whom I had not seen for many years. They had both married and had their own children.  My son was teaching hydraulic engineering at Tsinghua University and my daughter was teaching at the Ta- lien Railway Institute in the north- east. They were given leave to be with me during my entire visit.  I stayed in Peking for five weeks

and then visited Hangchow andKwangchow.

   Seeing is believing.  All these years abroad I had heard many things about China.  Seeing things in China for myself, I realized that a lot of what I had heard were rumors or distortions. My relatives and old friends told me all about themselves and I could see that the country was making good progress. My children were putting what they'd learned to use and were happy in their jobs.

   There's an old Chinese saying, "A tree may grow ten thousand feet high, but leaves grown from the soil will return to the soil."  I was 80.  My children and grand- children abroad were all on their own. What was I doing abroad all alone? After returning to the U.S. I went to the Liaison Office again and this time applied to go back to China for good.

   There were different reactions to my decision among my family and friends in the U.S.  Most of those who had been back to visit relatives or tour the country were for it.  What they saw and ex- perienced had convinced them it was a wise decision for me. Some of them were thinking of going back  themselves.  Others  were worried for me, but even these were net as distrustful of China as they had been a few years before.  With  increasing  people- to-people contacts between China and  other  countries,  more  and more have learned the truth about the new China.

   When I first went to America I had to take a lot of humiliation and discrimination   because   I   was Chinese.  Things have changed in recent   years.   Now,   generally speaking, Chinese in America are respected.  I  don't  know  much about politics, but I felt that the discrimination  was  because  the government of old China had let us down. Now our mother country is strong and growing and we who lived abroad felt we could hold our heads high.  Also I believe that basically people of different coun-

tries want to be friendly with one another.  With better understand-

  I kept quiet about my actual date of departure for China and only  told  a  few  relatives  and friends just before I got on the plane in June 1977. Now I've been back almost a year and I'm con- vinced I made the right decision. I have a nice roomy apartment       and a thoughtful companion who looks after me.  My children and grandchildren are always coming in to see me.  My relatives and friends abroad no longer worry      about me.

   When I first came back people told me that if that "gang of four" had not been ousted I couldn't have come back.  Or even if I had I wouldn't have been happy. Now that I know a bit more about this "gang of four" I can see that if they had remained in power the      Chinese people wouldn't have had a good life--and people like me probably  wouldn't  have  been allowed to come back to stay.

A family reunion.

MAY   1978