At the age of 12, seeing my grandfather coming into the sitting room and sit down, I said to my brother, “I hope he doesn’t sit down.”

My grandfather wrote poems on great rolls of thin white paper with a paintbrush（毛笔）, but over the years I wouldn’t listen to him read his poems. I would leave my Chinese poor as it was, which made listening to him too much of an effort.

On Mondays, he’d sit at Dragon Boat Restaurant with other old Chinese men. While from Tuesdays to Fridays, he was at a small square table by himself with a pot of tea and the Chinese newspaper. Life seemed easy and peaceful for him before he got brain cancer（癌症）and three months later, he died.

I was never particularly kind to my grandfather. At the funeral（葬礼）, my heart was filled with a sense of regret rather than sadness. I didn’t even show my grandfather the commonest kindness he was supposed to receive. I was 16 years old then.

Now I am 26. A few weeks ago, during a family dinner at a Chinese restaurant, the waiter talked with my mum about my speaking to him in Chinese, wishing that his own kids could speak a little Chinese as I did. Mom told him I had stopped speaking Chinese for some years and then had suddenly started up again in my late teens.

I have often wondered if my mum knows that my improvement in Chinese had to do with Granddad’s death. Whenever I am stuck for a word, I ask her. Whenever I am with her, or relatives, I practice. Now I am confident that the next time an elderly relative wants me to listen to them, I am not only willing, but also I am able to. In fact, the more I learn, the more interest I have in the fantastic Chinese culture. For me, the learning process is like a journey to rediscover my roots（根）.

It was at least two months before Christmas when nine-year-old Almie Rose told her father and me that she wanted a new bicycle. As Christmas drew nearer, her desire for a bicycle seemed to fade（消退）, or so we thought. We bought her a lovely doll, and a doll house. Then, much to our surprise, on December 23rd, she said that she “really wanted a bike more than anything else.” But it was just too late. With such a lot of preparations to do for the Christmas dinner we did not have the time to buy our little girl a bike. So, here we were Christmas Eve around 9:00 p.m., with Almie and her six-year-old brother, Dylan, sleeping in their beds. Now we could only think of the bicycle and the disappointment of our child. “What if I make a little bicycle out of clay (泥) and write a note that she could trade the clay bike in for a real bike?” her dad asked. So he spent the next four hours making a tiny clay bike. On Christmas morning, we were excited for Almie to open the little gift box with the beautiful red and white clay bike and the note. Finally, she opened it and read the note aloud. “Does this mean that I can trade in this bike that Daddy made me for a real one?”   I said, “Yes.” Almie had tears in her eyes when she replied, “I could never trade in this beautiful bicycle that Daddy made me. I'd rather keep this than get a real bike.” At that moment, we would have moved heaven and earth to buy her every bicycle in the world!