Notes from China (5) – Finding my roots, at last

The whole point of this family trip was to see the ancestral homes so it is perhaps appropriate that my concluding Meizhou post should revolve around them.

Most folks usually only have 1 ancestral home so I didn’t quite expect to find out that we had 3 ancestral homes  in the village, built by 3 successive generations beginning with my great-great-grandfather:

House 1:

House 2:

House 3 (unfortunately in a very dilapidated state due to illegal sub-letting):

Looking back, I personally found the whole reunion lunch that day devoid of meaning. I didn’t (and still don’t) feel anything for those strangers who came to eat with us. But these 3 houses are a different matter all together.

Maybe it was the sight of all those pictures hanging on the wall. Pictures of the very same faces that we have hanging on our walls all the way back in KL. Or, perhaps it was the reconciliation of those faces with the rooms we peeked into, with the lives that they must have led here in Meizhou, and the journey that they made to Malaysia.

Whatever it is, I can safely say that everyone developed some form of personal attachment to those old walls within the space of the 6 hours or so that we were there.

So on that note, I guess Dad’s mission objective for himself, as well as his children, was accomplished in the end. 

Related posts:

Notes from China (1) – Hong Kong

Notes from China (2) – Being a tourist in Meizhou

Notes from China (3) – Learning about my Ah Tai

Notes from China (4) – Lunch with the Leongs

Notes from China (4) – Lunch with the Leongs

Fittingly, our last full day in Meizhou centered on our visit to the Leong ancestral home. And similar to our experience at my great-grandmother’s ancestral home, it also commenced with letting off rounds of firecrackers and presenting offerings to our ancestors:

Round 1: Ancestral home

Moi Yen is real

Whilst talking about the recent Sichuan earthquake over lunch today, we progressed on to the subject of China and my upcoming family trip back to my ancestral village in general.

Well, to satisfy my lunch kakis’ as well as my own curiosity, I took up their call and googled up Moi Yen. Guess what, the place really does exist! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this stage. -_-”

Anyway, Moi Yen is known as Mei Xian (Mandarin), which is a county in the prefecture of MeiZhou, which is in Guangdong province . Apparently, the character “Mei” is the character for some plum blossom. Learn more from the Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meizhou.

The next step of course, is to search for pictures of the place:

http://www.pbase.com/getg3/hakka

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sohingpong/sets/72157594549522904/

First impressions: nice rustic scenery, I oughta have fun with my camera on the trip. But I’ve just had a closer look at the pictures. Dirt road, no hotel, generator electricity…………right…………. Think I can start to panic yet?