Unearthing a tragedy long ago

Lesley Delapaz traveled to China from the Dominican Republic in search of the history behind her maternal grandfather, who moved to the small Carribean country in the 1930s.

Delapaz's appearance in her grandfather's home village caused a quite a stir, according to Lie Huihan, a sixth-generation Chinese-Dutch who founded the genealogical research company, My China Roots. "A quarter-Chinese with dark skin, she looks a hundred times more like her countrymen in the Caribbean than her new-found relatives in a rural village on the southern Chinese coast. In fact, the village was so secluded that no one there had ever seen a foreigner before. One villager asked me secretly, 'Are all foreign people black?'"

Delapaz, who now lives in the United States, brought her two children, her husband, her younger sister, and, most importantly, her 56-year-old mother, who was overwhelmed by the rediscovery of her father.