Chen Xiaozhi was looking forward to 1997 and the family reunion she was sure it would bring. Fifteen years on, she is still waiting for permanent residency in Hong Kong - and the stresses and humiliation of the delay have taken her to the brink of suicide and back.
Chen, 50, is an illiterate mother of three children living on short-term visas in Hong Kong. Her Hong Kong husband died in 1998, before she was able to acquire permanent residency. His death left her ineligible for the one-way permit that would let her settle in the city. Instead, she has been returning to the mainland every three months and has to stay for a week while she applies for yet another two-way permit.
Chen married a Hong Kong construction worker, who she met through her parents, in 1987. But she was barred from moving to Hong Kong to live with him. Instead she lived with his parents, in Guangdong. 'Whenever I thought of 1997 I was very happy because I thought the family could reunite then,' she says.
Immediately after the handover she applied for a travel visa from the mainland but heard nothing about her application as the year ended and 1998 began.
Just before the mid-autumn festival - a traditional time for Chinese family unions - she received the news that changed her life: her husband had died.
Not long after his death, Chen's relationship with her mother-in-law deteriorated, forcing her and her three children out of the home.
In 2002 she left her eldest daughter to study in Guangzhou and brought her two sons, then 10 and seven, to Hong Kong to live with her husband's brother and try her luck at gaining residency.