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

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

Meet my great-grandmother. I called her “Ah Tai” though her real name is Lee Sin Moi. She died in 1990 if I remember correctly, so I have very little memories of her. What I do remember vividly was that every time we went back to KL to celebrate CNY, we all had to line up and greet this old lady who was all wrinkly and bent, and who spoke some incomprehensible (to our young ears anyway) language. Used to scare the hell outta me and I’d just utter the usual greeting and run out of her room as fast as I can. I have more memories of her funeral as I was older then. I remember how her open casket was placed in the living room for a few days. How my Ah Suk made us kids line the body with those yellow prayer papers. And I was too scared to actually lay the paper on her so I just released mine from a height just above her body and let it float down. I was only about 10 years old at the time, what do you expect?

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

If you only had 24 hours to spare in Meizhou, here’s a couple of things one might consider doing.

1. Get your fortune read at Nimbus Temple’s “Department of Executed”

2. Admire the unusual spiral chimney peculiar to Nimbus Temple

3. Go “ooooh” and “aaaaaaaaaaaah” over seeing a real life “mei hua” for the first time at the foot of Yinna Mountain

4. Spin the prayer wheels at the Thousand Buddha Temple

5. Meditate on the melody of a gazillion wind chimes, chiming in unison

6. Go sign-spotting

7. Eat…..

8. And eat some more….until you vow not to eat “Mei Cai Kou Rou” for a whole year…then you can stop eating.