'My heart is so full'

Following the clues

Around a dozen volunteers immediately fanned out to begin the search.

For Jasmine's mother's family, there was only the 33-year-old letter written by a man surnamed Chua in Shantou, to Jasmine's late aunt in Malaysia. Nobody remembered exactly how he was related to the family.

The address on the envelope led nowhere. Street numbering had changed. With help from local police, volunteers eventually tracked down the sender's descendants.

"They had always known they had relatives in Singapore," said Zeng. "But they didn't really know who they were because the older generation had all died."

When the two families finally met, something incredible happened.

More than 30 years earlier, neither family's elders were literate and able to write. On the China side, a young woman had penned the letter on behalf of the Chua patriarch. Back in Singapore, Jasmine, then a teenager, had replied on behalf of her aunt, something she had completely forgotten. Neither side imagined they would ever meet.

Three decades later, each woman arrived carrying the letter the other had written.

The surprises did not end there.

As the families pored over the zupu, or genealogical record, they discovered that the man whose letter Jasmine had kept for 33 years was her mother's eldest brother, who was left behind in China and later raised by another family. And the woman who wrote the letter on his behalf was his daughter and Jasmine's first cousin.

"The reunion didn't simply reconnect two families," said Zeng. "It reconstructed their family tree."

For Jasmine's 79-year-old mother, Chua Kee Chu, the encounter was almost beyond belief.

"I never thought in my lifetime that I could meet them," she said. "I was very moved."

The search for the relatives of Jasmine's father was more straightforward but no less meaningful.

All 85-year-old Goh Kian Chen knew was that his father had come from a place called Goubian Village.

The problem was that there were three villages with that name. The volunteers eventually found the right one, and with it, Goh's cousin and the house his father once lived in.

"I wanted to do this for him, to let him step into his father's house," Jasmine said.

"It's not just finding a house," Goh added. "It's discovering your roots and where you came from."

The hardest search was for Raymond's family.

The only clue was a photograph of his grandfather's gravestone before it was exhumed from Choa Chu Kang Cemetery. It bore the words "Xiwei Village".

But across the larger region known as Chaoshan that includes Chaozhou, more than 10 villages bear that name.

Volunteers compared village histories, surnames and migration records before narrowing it to one village in Shantou.

Even then, time was running out.

"Madam Goh-Chew's family only had two or three days before returning to Singapore," Zeng recalled.

"We mobilized our volunteer network, published an appeal through our WeChat public account and posted videos online. Very quickly, information came back identifying the exact household."

The reunion revealed another forgotten family story.

Raymond learned that his grandfather, like countless migrants who left for Nanyang, had faithfully sent remittances home every month.

"That HK $100 arrived every month, usually on the 28th or 30th," Zeng said. "They told us that money kept them alive. It was their livelihood."

Not every reunion begins with tears. Some Chinese relatives were initially worried the Singaporeans had come to claim ancestral property. The Singaporeans wondered whether these strangers were really family. The volunteers deftly played mediator until everyone realized neither side wanted anything except connection.

One evening, the newly reunited families went together to watch Dear You, the hit Chinese movie about family bonds, loss and reconciliation, which was showing in movie theaters.

"We watched together, and we cried together," Jasmine said.

Over the past decade, Menggui Chaoshan has reunited more than 1,000 families, including at least 18 from Singapore and more than 80 from Malaysia, as well as overseas Chinese from countries like the United States, Canada and France.