"I was only thirteen when four of my team members and I were chosen by my swim coach to train with the Chinese National Team. The following piece shows how that experience has influenced me." The night before I left for China, my mother called me into her room. I entered not knowing what to expect. I sat down at the end of her very neatly-made bed, opposite the bedroom table on which she kept a Ming-style vase illustrated in great detail. She told me that my great-grandmother was still living in the surroundings of Beijing. Her name was Ren Li Ling and she was 97 years old. This was the first time I had ever heard of her. The dragon on the vase snaked through the flowers and vines as my mother said, "Pu Pu, look at me. You need to hear this so that when you go to China you will understand. You must keep this knowledge in your heart." She told me a story about my grandfather, Ren Li Ling's son, who left Beijing to go to college in Taiwan. She told me how the Chinese civil war kept him away from his mother for fifty years, so neither of them even knew that the other was alive. No one from Taiwan could visit, write, or call anyone in mainland. All lines of communication were cut off. She told me of my grandfather's devotion to his own children, and how difficult it was for him to send his daughter to America for her education, fearing that same separation. He gave my mother all that he could give -- nineteen years of love and fifty years of savings. I learned how my mother, through means only available in this country, would finally be able to unite my great-grandmother with my grandfather again. The dragon curled around the vase, connecting the separate vines. For a fleeting second, I felt it was present in my mother's room. It was all very strange, yet very clear. I began to understand that this trip to China was not just for me; it was for my mother, and her father, and his mother. Now, I had not only a future, but more significantly, a past. I saw the world with new eyes. And so I went to China and met my great-grandmother. My great-aunt picked me up at the training center, and we rode in a taxi through the crowded city. The noise of the taxi and the city united into a deep roar. We finally stopped in front of a narrow street lined on either side with small one-level houses. As we made our way to a house like all the others, I drew the stares of many people in the street. My great-aunt led me through a rotting doorway into a room with a furnace , table, and a rocking chair where an old woman wearing gloves sat facing the doorway, covered with a worn brown blanket. I walked over and immediately embraced this frail woman as if I had known her all my life. My limited, broken Chinese wasn't up to expressing my complicated feelings. And even though I couldn't completely understand what she was saying in her thick Beijing accent, I knew -- the same way I knew what my mother had been trying to tell me before I left. Her joy shone through her toothless smile. She wouldn't let go of my hand. I haltingly asked her how she had managed to live such a long life. She answered in words I will never forget, "Hope has kept me alive. I have lived this long because I wanted to see my son before I died." My fellow team members must have wondered how two people separated by three generations could be so close. Before this trip, I would have wondered the same thing. And even now, I can't quite explain it. We were as different as two people can be; some 85 years and 8,000 miles apart. We came from two entirely different cultures; yet we were connected by a common heritage . I stayed for dinner which was cooked in a black iron wok over the furnace. The meal was lavish , prepared in my honor. As I began to eat, with my great-grandmother beside me, I felt the dragon was present. But this time, the feeling didn't pass; the dragon had become a part of me. My great-grandmother passed away last year at the age of 100. With her highest hopes and wildest dreams fulfilled, I know she died happy. The dragon is mentioned several times in the passage because   _  .
the vase with the dragon on it is very valuable and beautiful it stands for the blood running in every Chinese it is a sign of the writer's devotion to his birthplace the writer's mother hoped the writer would be as strong as a dragon