You didn’t see me stir my coffee with chopsticks

I almost choke on the thick sooty atmosphere as we arrive in China.  We are in Quanzhou, an industrial city in Fujian Province.  My granddad was born not far from here, in Nan’an.  Everywhere there are new roads, new buildings, and new factories pumping soot into the air.   The locals all seem to be in a rush somewhere, including a number of suicidal motorists driving down the motorway in the wrong direction!

Our hotel is across the road from a Lake.  A rather picturesque lake that smells suspiciously of sewage.  A guy is fishing there, oblivious to the wafting aroma.

Don’t get me wrong…there is a lot to like about China.  But these were my first impressions as a tourist.  And Quanzhou is not a tourist town.  Like many cities across China, it is forging ahead with single-minded industrialisation into the 21st century.

Bamboo Rafting down the Li River

We did fly inland to Guilin afterwards, which was a much more tourist friendly place.  The air was fresh, the locals sold us trinkets and souveniurs, and we went bamboo rafting down the Li River. 

But back to more interesting stuff.  You can tell alot about a place by the food it serves.  The Chinese eat just about anything that moves, and just as many things that don’t.   Fujian food…..rice porridge for breakfast, lot’s of preserved salty vegetables, various boiled and fried greasy things of dubious origins.  Some of it is delicious.  I find it odd that rice is not generally served in restaurants…you have to ask for it.  Apparently rice is more a Cantonese thing.  The coffee is awful.  They don’t drink it here, and if they do, it’s mixed with condensed milk.  I stir it with a chopstick.

At night there is an opera performance on the Lake.  If there is one thing worse than running your fingernails down a blackboard, it is the sound of Chinese opera.  It is truly awful.  And not just any grade of awful, it is a cross between someone with the lungs of Celine Dion and the rhythm of a mating bullfrog.

Now the purpose of the trip was to visit my Grandfathers birthplace in Nan’an.  We drove up there with the whole extended family.  My Granddads sister has been busy getting the place rebuilt.   My Great-Grandfather made many trips to Malaysia to work and send money back to China in the early 1900′s.  He bought a plot of land, which unfortunately seemed to have been taken over by squatters.  Yes, people just come on your land and build houses on it, because you’re not there to stop them!

We also visit the Ng Family memorial next to a monastery in Quanzhou.  It goes back 1300yrs, and almost 5million descendants can trace their ancestry back here.

The mind boggles.

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Family Pilgrimage

We’re having a family reunion.  Kind of.  Although it’s probabably more a pilgrimage to see where we came from.  It’s something everybody should do.

My granddad was born in China, but left with my great-grandad to Malaysia when he was ten.  There is a family home in Nan’an, near Quanzhou in Fujian Province.

It’s funny how many people assume that because you’re Chinese, you must be from China.  None of us have ever been to China.  And most of us left Malaysia when I was a kid.

So here I am in Hong Kong.  My grandads Sister lives here.  She talks in three languages and dialects.  Very very fast.  And mixes the words.  So a sentence will start off in Hokkien, interspersed with Mandarin and Cantonese, some Hakka thrown in, and bit’s of English.  Oh, that’s five!  I have a job trying to figure out what she’s saying.  She has been busy rebuilding the family residence in China.  Not that any immediate family reside there, just some distant cousins.

So Hong Kong…..Let me just say it’s one of the busiest places I’ve ever been in.  The streets are a swarm of people.  The shopping is good.  I have been busy stocking up on many things I don’t need!  We went to Stanley Park, then had lunch in Kowloon.  I attempt to practice my very rusty Cantonese, only to have the shop assistent roll her eyes and talk back to me in English.

Meh.  I’ll figure it out by the end of this trip.

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