Assorted Ravings of the Slightly-Weird

Homecoming

Hi all, apologies for the lack of updates recently. Travel season has started again, coinciding with results season so the crazy is about to hit the fan.

Anyhow, the most exciting thing that's happened over the past few weeks is that I went back to my hometown in China last week. My dad's side of the family comes from a village in Fujian province, about 4 hours drive from Xiamen. (We're not Hokkien by the way, we're Hakka.)

12 of us made the trip this time around, including my 91-year-old grandma. So it was a pretty big thing for the whole family both here and back in China. Lots of firecrackers to welcome us, big (and I mean huge, impossible to finish) lunches and dinners, and many many friendly relatives. It's funny how I don't know any of them but just because we're relatives there's some kind of instant bond. Maybe blood really is thicker blah blah blah...

For me, the highlight of the trip was going back to my ancestral home and paying my respects to my great-grandparents. I got to see where they used to live, stand in the very room they used to sleep in and look at the letters and old photos that they kept. I even found old notebooks of my grandpa's, some of which we brought back as a memento.

But I'm glad my grandpa decided to uproot himself and make his way here. Else, I'd be living in some village in China, competing with tons of smart Chinese for a place in a university (they study from 5am to 1030pm 6 days a week!), and guzzling rice wine by the bottle.

Posted by scrabbyfoo at April 30, 2007 11:51 AM